SAS Intelligent Decisioning: Accessibility Features

Overview

This document describes how to configure your system and use our products to maximize accessibility support.

Recommended Configuration

This product works with a variety of operating systems, browsers, and screen readers. However, we recommend the following software for a better experience when using our product with a screen reader:

Use Google Chrome as your browser.
Note: It is recommended that you use the latest version of your preferred browser.
On Microsoft Windows, use the latest version of JAWS.
On Apple macOS, use VoiceOver.

Limited Vision

Selecting the High Contrast Theme

You can change the appearance of the web applications by using the Theme setting. The theme specifies the collection of colors, graphics, and fonts that appear in the application. We recommend trying the High Contrast theme. This theme uses a black background with bright foreground colors to achieve high contrast.

To change to the High Contrast theme:

Click on the user button in the application toolbar to access the application options menu.
Click Settings.
Navigate to the General page, which is in the Global section.
For the Theme option, select Choose a theme.
Select the High Contrast theme.

Note: The theme change takes effect after you close the Settings window.

Accessibility Settings for Limited Vision

There are several settings in the Accessibility section that can also be used to improve your experience.

To change these settings:

Click the user button in the application toolbar to access the application options menu.
Click Settings.
Navigate to the Accessibility page, which is in the Global section.
Update the settings that you are interested in.

The following settings for limited vision are available from this page:

To turn off animation, deselect Enable visual effects. Turning off this option suppresses the subtle movement and animation that is used to emphasize changes in state in the interface.
Select Adjust the display duration for pop-up notifications to specify how long temporary pop-up notification messages are displayed. Increasing the amount of time that notifications are displayed can help users discover and read messages that disappear automatically.
Select Invert application colors to make the user interface easier to see for users with sensitivity to certain bright colors (for example, a black-on-white display). You can also use the Ctrl+` (Ctrl+back quote) keyboard shortcut to invert the application colors.
Select Display tooltips when using the keyboard to navigate to specify the location where the tooltips appear in the browser window.
Sometimes, the text for a heading is truncated in the user interface. To enable the display of the complete headings in tooltips, select Make truncated headings focusable.
The focus indicator is an outline that indicates which user interface component is active. You can make the focus indicator easier to see by selecting Customize the focus indicator settings and adjusting the color, thickness, and opacity.

Without Vision

Description of User Interface

SAS Intelligent Decisioning contains three areas: application bar, navigation area, and main content area.

You can navigate using landmarks. For more information, see Accessing Product-Specific Landmarks. For a list of keyboard shortcuts, see Keyboard Shortcuts.

Application Bar

The banner at the top of the SAS Intelligent Decisioning window is referred to as the application bar. To move focus to this area of the product, you can use the Ctrl+F6 keyboard shortcut to select Application Bar. The application bar contains access to these items:

the applications menu icon , which you can use to navigate to different applications such as SAS Intelligent Decisioning or SAS Environment Manager.
the name of the application in which you are working and the selected task such as SAS Intelligent Decisioning — Build Decisions.
the notification and help buttons.
the User button, which gives you access to application options such as the Settings window and product documentation in the Help Center.

Navigation Area

A navigation area on the side of the window enables you to navigate to different categories within SAS Intelligent Decisioning. To move focus to the navigation area, you can use the Ctrl+F6 keyboard shortcut to select Navigation Area.

Note: In the documentation, the navigation area is referred to as the navigation bar.

Use the navigation bar to navigate to the following categories in SAS Intelligent Decisioning:

Home
Decisions
Deployments
The DECISION ELEMENTS section of the navigation area contains the following categories
- Rule sets
- Segmentation trees
- Lookup tables
- Treatments
- Treatment groups
- Code files
The GLOBAL ELEMENTS section of the navigation area contains the following categories:
- Custom functions
- Global variables
- Value lists
- Advanced lists
- Tag management

For a description of the Home page, see SAS Intelligent Decisioning Home Page in SAS Intelligent Decisioning: User’s Guide.For a description of the Deployments page, see View All Published Decisions in SAS Intelligent Decisioning: User’s Guide.

For all other categories, the list of objects in the category is displayed in the main content area.

Main Content Area

The main content area is your workspace. The main content area for each category except Deployments and Home displays the following items at the top of the workspace:

The icon that refreshes the category list.
The Opened items button displays the list of items that you have opened in the current category.
The Search field enables you to search for the name of a category item.
The Filter menu enables you to select a saved filter.
The New context-sensitive button enables you to create a new item in the selected category.
The icon that opens the selected object.
The actions menu icon displays a context-sensitive menu that enables you to perform additional tasks on selected category items.

To move focus to the main content area, you can use the Ctrl+F6 keyboard shortcut to select Main Content Area. To move focus to the search field, you can use the Ctrl+F6 keyboard shortcut to select Search. To open an item in the main content, you can click the item.

When you open an item, the category list is replaced with a set of tabbed pages. These tabs enable you to perform context-specific tasks such as edit decisions, add objects to a decision, test scenarios, manage variables, manage versions of category items, view an item’s history, and more. Some tabs (for example, the Scoring tab) include additional tabs when clicked.

For more information, see SAS Intelligent Decisioning: User’s Guide.

Accessibility Settings to Optimize Screen Reader Usage

In the Accessibility section, you can use the Enable sounds option to improve your experience.

Click the user button in the application toolbar to access the application options menu.
Click Settings.
Navigate to the Accessibility page, which is located in the Global section.
Select Enable sounds to enable audio indicators for events that occur within the user interface. For example, you hear “tick, tick” for the loading screen.
Note: Changes take effect after you sign out and sign back in.

Disabling the JAWS Virtual PC Cursor

This product is a Rich Internet Application that contains many highly interactive widgets. JAWS users should press Insert+Z to turn off the JAWS Virtual PC cursor by default. This strategy enables JAWS users to quickly use keyboard shortcuts to move focus around the application window, edit code, complete forms within tasks, and so on. Turning off the JAWS Virtual PC cursor also helps JAWS users avoid potential confusion that can occur when trying to access complex HTML5 widgets.

Mobility

Accessibility Settings for Mobility

There are several settings in the Accessibility section that can also be used to improve your experience.

To change these settings:

Click the user button in the application toolbar to access the application options menu.
Click Settings.
Navigate to the Accessibility page, which is located in the Global section.

For descriptions of each setting, see Settings in SAS Viya Platform: General Usage Help for Web Applications.

Accessing Product-Specific Landmarks

This product provides custom landmarks that you can use to navigate. To access the product-specific landmarks, use Ctrl+F6 in Microsoft Windows and Command+F6 in Apple OS X.

The available landmarks depend on your location in the application. For example, a page in your product might have these landmarks:

Application Bar moves focus to the banner that runs along the top of the product.
Search moves focus to the search box that is above the list of items.
Main Content Area moves focus to the area where you select and work with items.
Navigation Area moves focus to the first item in the navigation area of the product.

Keyboard Shortcuts

This product uses the standard keyboard shortcuts that are available in Microsoft Windows and Apple OS X operating environments. The following keyboard shortcuts are supported in this product:

Keyboard Shortcuts
Keyboard Shortcuts	Action
Open a window that lists landmarks.	Ctrl+F6 in Microsoft Windows and Command+F6 in Apple OS X
Open a window that lists keyboard shortcuts. Note: This feature might not be available in all applications.	Ctrl+F9
Open a pop-up menu. For example, when a column heading in a table has focus, pressing Shift+F10 opens the pop-up menu for that column.	Shift+F10
Enable the use of the Tab and Shift+Tab keys to move between fields in the Expression Editor.	Ctrl+m

Navigating the Expression Editor

In the rule set editor, press the Tab key to move the cursor to the expression field for a condition or action, and then press Enter to display the action buttons for that rule. Press the Tab key to move the focus to the first action button (Open the expression editor). Press Enter to open the Expression Editor, or use the arrow keys to select a different action. When you open the Expression Editor, the expression field has focus. To enable the use of the Tab and Shift+Tab keys to move between fields in the Expression Editor, enter Ctrl+m.

Editing Code Files and Custom Functions

To move focus away from the code field in the Code Editor or in the Custom Functions Editor, press F6.

Troubleshooting Keyboard Shortcuts

Your shortcut keys might not work as expected due to the following reasons:

The keyboard shortcut might be reserved for use by your browser.
Your keyboard is not a standard U.S. keyboard, and therefore some of the keyboard shortcuts are not supported.
Your web browser is not supported or needs to be upgraded. To view the list of supported browsers, see Web Browsers in System Requirements for the SAS Viya Platform.
Some shortcut keys might conflict with the shortcut keys of the Input Method Editor (IME). You can modify the IME shortcut.

Hearing

All short-form English language external SAS videos are captioned as part of the standard video publishing process along with select longer-form videos. This includes both technical and marketing videos, which are published to the SAS Software and SAS Users channel on YouTube and to SAS web properties. Longer-form videos who are not captioned as part of the standard process may be captioned upon request.

Contact Us

For more information about the accessibility of SAS products, visit support.sas.com/accessibility. If you have additional questions about accessibility, email us at accessibility@sas.com.

Last updated: January 6, 2026