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Adobe Slate accessibility

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From: Bourne, Sarah (ITD)
Date: Jan 22, 2016 7:36AM

I was asked about the accessibility of content created with Adobe's "Slate". In the example I was given (https://slate.adobe.com/cp/iMS1n/ ) I noticed a few things, but I don't know if they can be addressed in how you create it:

1. The content headings start with H2, although they appear to nest properly after that. H1 is used by Slate for their "report abuse" link. (This is particularly odd: visually it's just a tiny link at the very end of the page.)
2. None of the images in the example have alternative text. For some, I would deem them "decorative", so they're OK. However, others need it.
a. Not all images are displayed with the IMG tag. For these, there are a bunch of nested divs that call in images with some sort of scripting magic.
b. There is a "caption" feature, but the text is wrapped in a DIV rather than using the HTML5 features (for instance) that would allow you (theoretically, at least) to programmatically associate the caption to the picture.
c. Some "captions" sort of pop into view as you scroll - not sure if/how they are read by screen readers.
3. Zoom by using ctrl with the mouse scroll wheel doesn't work, but it does with keyboard and menu commands - not optimum, but not a disaster.
4. There is no language set for the page.

Questions:
Does anybody have experience working with Slate? Do you know of any resources for maximizing accessibility in Slate presentations? Any further observations from the example?

What I found by searching:
I couldn't find anything on the Adobe Slate help area or on the Adobe Accessibility blog. I did find an inquiry on Photoshop.com, which was answered:
"We have no official statement regarding Accessibility in Adobe Slate at this time. If this is a feature that is important to you, I would recommend posting an "Idea" here that asks us to "Update Slate for Accessibility requirements" or something of that nature. Then others with the same concern can add their voices to yours." (1)

And I found a PDF from the University of Illinois at Springfield that has one sentence on accessibility:
"The Adobe Slate app automatically includes the "skip" ALT Text for all images, which means that any images important to the understanding of your story should be explained in the text." (2)

Thank you for, well, anything you've got on this!

sb
Sarah E. Bourne
Director of IT Accessibility, MassIT
Commonwealth of Massachusetts
1 Ashburton Pl. rm 1601 Boston MA 02108
617-626-4502
<EMAIL REMOVED>
http://www.mass.gov/MassIT

(1) http://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/is-output-from-adobe-slate-accessible-at-all
(2) http://blogs.uis.edu/colrs/files/2015/11/Adobe-Slate.pdf