Accessibility
Accessibility Overview
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is committed to ensuring that
the Provider Enrollment, Chain, and Ownership System (PECOS) application is accessible
to people with disabilities and strives to meet or exceed the requirements of Section 508
of the Rehabilitation Act (29 U.S.C. 794d), as amended in 1998.
If you cannot access any content or use any features on this website due to a disability,
please contact us via email at
CMS_IT_Service_Desk@cms.hhs.gov. In addition, if you find that PECOS is inaccessible
to your needs, you may submit a
paper CMS-855 Medicare
Enrollment Application
as an
alternative.
If you are reporting a problem accessing specific content or features, please email the material
in question and/or include the URL. Please let us know the specific problems you are having.
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Browser and Operating System Support, Settings, and Features
The PECOS application officially supports Internet Explorer (version 8 or higher), Mozilla
Firefox, and Google Chrome web browsers using Microsoft Windows (XP or higher).
In order for PECOS to work properly, your web browser must be configured to allow JavaScript.
JavaScript is allowed by default in all major web browsers, so it is unlikely that you will
encounter this issue unless you have intentionally turned it off. If you have JavaScript disabled,
then you will see a message at the top of the page letting you know that you will need to enable it
and refresh the page in order for PECOS to work properly.
PECOS supports the use of basic accessibility features provided by web browsers such as text
resizing, changing text and link colors, and zoom. PECOS has been tested to scale up to 200% using
browser zoom functionality, effectively doubling the size of information on the page.
PECOS also supports the use of accessibility features for supported operating systems such as high
contrast themes and StickyKeys. For documentation and guidance on these accessibility features,
refer to the
Accessibility in Microsoft Products page
and select your
operating system.
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Assistive Technology Support
PECOS has been tested with the JAWS (Version 16) and NVDA screen readers.
While PECOS officially supports Google Chrome and older versions of Internet Explorer, it is tested
using JAWS 16 paired with Internet Explorer 11 and the latest version of NVDA paired with the
latest version of Firefox. We use the default settings for both screen readers while conducting our
testing since we assume beginner screen reader users will not be using highly configured settings.
The accessibility of both browser and screen reader software continue to improve over time and so
it is recommended that newer versions are used for a more optimal experience.
For guidance on how to use the JAWS and NVDA screen readers, including a comprehensive list of
keystrokes, refer to the
JAWS support documentation
and
NVDA
user guide.
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PECOS Accessibility and Usability Consideration
The PECOS application was designed with consideration for both accessibility and usability. It
accounts for multiple types of disabilities such as keyboard users needing to track their focus and
perform all actions using a keyboard, screen reader users needing alternative text for images and
properly defined section headings for navigation, and vision-impaired users needing appropriate
contrast between elements on the page in order to read and distinguish the information.
In addition to following these basic accessibility principles, PECOS provides additional features
such as the following:
-
Pages throughout the application follow a consistent structure that allow easy navigation and
location of information
-
A 'Skip to Main Content' link is provided on every page to easily jump to the main
content. This link is the first element on every page and is visually hidden until it receives
keyboard focus.
-
A custom focus indicator is provided to more prominently show which element currently has
keyboard focus.
-
Links that open in a new tab include an image icon at the end of the link with descriptive alt
text. This is particularly helpful to screen reader users since it makes these types of changes
in context predictable.
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PECOS' Use of Tables
The PECOS application uses "layout tables" to control the visual layout of the pages. Because of
the table-based layouts, screen reader users listen to the screen reader to detect this information.
However, screen reader users can distinguish between the presence of actual data tables used for
presenting and tabulating data versus layout tables.
For actual data tables, table headers are used to help screen readers make sense of table
structures. For layout tables, neither a summary description nor table headers are provided.
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Downloading Reports Data
Users may download populated CMS 855 Medicare forms, supporting documentation, and other PECOS
documents as an Adobe Acrobat PDF. PECOS includes the following note on each page that a PDF can be
generated:
Documents in PDF format require the Adobe
Acrobat Reader
in order to view. If you experience problems with PDF documents, please download the latest version.
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YouTube Accessibility
PECOS provides training tutorials that are hosted on YouTube. These videos display in either a
Flash player or an HTML5 player. The Flash player requires that Flash be installed on your computer
and is also known to be less accessible than the HTML5 version. Flash can be installed by
navigating to the Adobe Flash Player
page and
following the provided instructions.
YouTube defaults to the HTML5 player for web browsers that support all of the necessary
requirements. Web browsers that support some, but not all, of the necessary requirements default to
the Flash player unless you specifically request that the HTML5 player be used. This request can be
made on the YouTube HTML5 Video Player page.
Web browsers
that do not support any of the necessary requirements default to the Flash player with no way to
switch to the HTML5 player.
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The following keyboard controls will perform the following actions and navigations when viewing a calendar widget in PECOS:
| Command |
Description |
| Up/Down Arrows |
Toggle between same day in previous/next week |
| Left/Right Arrows |
Toggle to previous/next day |
| Alt+Page Up |
Toggle to same date in previous year |
| Alt+Page Down |
Toggle to same date in next year |
| Page Up |
Toggle to same date in previous month |
| Page Down |
Toggle to same date in next month |
| Home |
Move focus to first day of current month |
| End |
Move focus to last day of current month |
| Enter |
Submit form with date selected |
| Escape |
Closed the date picker widget without any selection |
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