Accessibility features

These features work on every screen of Silktide. Each part of Silktide also has its own page for its charts, maps, and editors; see Accessibility of Silktide.

Use the keyboard

Silktide is designed to be used with the keyboard alone:

Tab and Shift+Tab move between links and controls. The control that has shows a visible outline.
Enter follows a link or presses a button. Space presses buttons and turns switches and checkboxes on or off.
In menus, option lists, tabs, and segmented controls, the arrow keys move between the choices.
Escape closes the menu or dialog you have open, and focus returns to the control that opened it.

Keyboard shortcuts take you straight to common tools:

Press ⌘K on Mac or Ctrl+K on Windows or Linux to open the command palette. Type what you want to do, or the name of a screen such as Tasks or My settings, then press Enter.
Press ? to open Help beside your work.
Press ⌘/ on Mac or Ctrl+/ on Windows or Linux to see the full list of shortcuts.
When you open an item from a list, press J for the next item and K for the previous one.

Single-key shortcuts, such as ?, J, and K, never fire while you are typing in a field. If you use speech input, or tend to press keys by accident, turn them off: press ⌘/ or Ctrl+/, then turn off Single-key shortcuts. For every shortcut, see Keyboard shortcuts.

Page titles. Each screen has its own page title, so your screen reader tells you where you are when a screen opens.
Headings. Each screen starts with a main heading, and its sections have their own headings.
Landmarks. The navigation rail is a navigation landmark named Primary, and the screen's content is in the main landmark. To skip past the navigation, move to the main landmark or the first heading.
Names for icon buttons. Buttons that show only an icon have a text name.
Messages. Short confirmations, such as a change being saved, appear in a notifications region that screen readers announce without moving your focus. While a notification is showing, press Alt+T (Option+T on Mac) to move focus to it.

Read a chart

Charts have an Expand button below them:

Expand opens the chart full screen with a table of every value it plots. When you reach the button, your screen reader tells you that it opens this table.
In the full-screen view, Hide data and Show data hide and show the table, and Download CSV saves the values as a file you can open in a spreadsheet. Close chart view or Escape takes you back.
Explain, where you see it, asks Silktide Agent to describe the chart for you.

A screen reader reads the chart itself as one picture, named after the chart, so you do not need to explore it point by point. The details that appear when you point at a chart need a mouse or trackpad; the table holds the same values.

Choose a theme and contrast

Open the account menu in the navigation rail (on a phone, the Profile tab) and choose Theme:

Appearance. Auto follows your device's light or dark setting. Light and Dark override it. To switch between light and dark from anywhere, press ⌘⌥⇧L on Mac or Ctrl+Alt+Shift+L on Windows or Linux.
Theme. A color family: Silktide, Aqua, Glade, Dune, or Velvet. Each one has a light and a dark version.
High contrast. Auto turns high contrast on when your device asks for more contrast, such as Increase contrast on a Mac. On always uses high contrast, and Off never does.

Silktide remembers these choices in the browser where you make them. If you use more than one browser or device, set them in each one.

Reduce motion

Motion is in the same Theme menu. Auto follows your device's reduce motion setting. Reduced turns off animation that is not essential, such as screens sliding into place and numbers counting up. Full keeps animation on.

Text size, zoom, and small screens

To make text larger, use your browser's zoom:

Action	Mac	Windows / Linux
Zoom in	⌘+	Ctrl++
Zoom out	⌘−	Ctrl+−
Return to 100%	⌘0	Ctrl+0

As you zoom in, or as the window gets narrower, Silktide rearranges its layout so you do not have to scroll sideways to read a screen. At phone widths, the main areas move into a tab bar. Content that needs both width and height to make sense, such as wide tables, charts, maps, and heatmaps, may scroll sideways inside its own area.

Time before you are signed out

Silktide signs you out after a period that your account administrator chooses under Log users out after in Account settings, from 1 hour to 30 days. If your administrator has not chosen one, it is 1 week. After you sign in again, Silktide returns you to the screen you were on, though changes you had not saved may be lost. If the period is too short for the way you work, ask your administrator for a longer one.

Interface language

You can use Silktide in your own language. See How do I change the interface language?

Something not working?

If a screen does not work with your keyboard, screen reader, or other assistive technology, tell us.