Why Brilliant Assessments is serious about enabling accessibility
When we were crafting the Brilliant platform you know and love today, we were invited to partner with Be.Accessible (now Be.Labs) to help them build a best-practice accessible assessment. Through this experience, we not only built an incredibly accessible and compliant platform but also formed the belief that accessibility is not a tick-box, a gold star, or a nice thing to have. It's genuinely the right thing to do.
Brilliant Assessments is designed to support you in deploying assessments that are fully conformant with WCAG 2.1 level AA or better.
What does fully conformant accessibility mean?
Fully conformant means that the content fully conforms to the accessibility standard without any exceptions, so assessments are easy to navigate for respondents using assistive technologies like screen readers and keyboard-accessible for users who can’t rely on a mouse. But the accessibility story of Brilliant Assessments doesn’t end there. In this article, we talk more about how we remove barriers to engagement for respondents in our platform – and how you can use these features to make your assessments brilliantly accessible too.
Providing Information in Multiple Formats
Accessibility isn't just about meeting technical standards—it's about how we present information. One firm differentiator we have to improve accessibility is offering assessment reports in PDF and Word formats. Since PDFs are often inaccessible to screen readers, giving participants the option to download a Word document ensures that users who rely on these tools can access the same information as everyone else.
So, if you don’t already, we encourage you to offer multiple formats to accommodate your participants' diverse needs and preferences. Whether someone has a visual impairment, learning difficulty, or needs to engage with content differently, providing options ensures a better experience for everyone.
Supporting Non-English Speaking Respondents
Over 60% of the world’s population speaks a language other than English as their first language. Offering multi-lingual assessments expands your reach and enables you to engage with diverse populations across borders. On top of this, respondents are more likely to understand and accurately respond to questions when presented in their native language.
Our assessment builder supports 150 languages and dialects, and you can select multiple languages for each assessment.
Whether you need assessments in Mandarin, Arabic, or any other language, we also support all character types. This lets you easily upload existing translations or create new ones using language codes.
Customize every aspect, from buttons and labels to headings and respondent screens, ensuring a seamless experience for participants worldwide.
Reducing Cognitive Load
For participants with low literacy, neurodevelopmental challenges, or those for whom English is not a first language, too much content on a single page can be overwhelming. We support this by allowing respondents to add structured sections to assessments so they can focus without getting overwhelmed. Respondents can only view one section at a time, and these can be as short as one question or grouped as a single theme.
Create Opportunities with Your Assessments
Accessibility is about creating opportunities. When you make your assessments accessible, you contribute to a digitally inclusive future. We’re proud to support businesses in offering accessible assessments and are excited to continue improving and evolving alongside you.
As always, we welcome your feedback on Brilliant Assessments. Please email support@brilliantassessments.com if you encounter accessibility barriers.
