Accessibility
All you WCAG nuts this is the place for you: how to make Drupal more accessible. Hints, tips, discussion and patch proposals.
Some notes after an accessibility review on a site
In random order, rough, wrote as making changes. Most interesting is the aria-required and adding the h2's to status messages, etc.
If using beauty tips, beware of using non-100% opacity due to those with visibility issues.
Add h2's around messages and role alert.
<ul>
<li role="alert"><h2>
<span class="status-message-box status-status"> </span> Your password and further instructions have been sent to your e-mail address.
</h2></li>
</ul>
D7 Accessibility Update: 2 weeks left
3 more patches have been committed this last week, but others are stuck with disagreement about how to approach accessibility or simply need review.
3 more committed:
- #386462: Skip navigation in all core themes
- #540282: Accessibility improvements for the toolbar
- #622136: User filter accessibility
Needs Help:
"Meta Accessibility" - How to Make Accessibility Features Known to the User
What if your site is perfectly accessible but no one knows about it?
This question came up while working on Accessibility improvements for vertical tabs , together with some first thoughts on this issue.
D7 Accessibility Update: 3 weeks left
The focus of the Drupal 7 code slush has now shifted to Accessibility, Usability and Performance. Dries and webchick are prioritizing many patches that the 'Accessibility Task Force' had focused on. Yay!
The Accessible Content Module and the Accessible module
You all might remember an earlier post I made about the QUAIL accessibility library and its potential for checking content for accessibility. Well, now you can download the fruits of that labor!
There's a readme file in there that outlines how to download and setup the module. It comes packaged with the quail lib for now, but if it goes to drupal.org I'll remove it and require folks to download it from it's own site on code.google.com.
Garland heading patch needs review for D7
An important accessibility patch needs your help: Garland: Use appropriate header-tags following the W3C.
Please take a look and review this page. @mgifford, @JeffBurnz and many others have contributed.
It's simple to review this one: just start with Drupal 7 head and apply the patch (direct link below).
Drag-n-drop accessibility strategies
I'm worried our strategy is lacking to solve Drag and Drop for table rows not accessible to screen-reader users. This issue is flagged as critical for Drupal 7 and it's very important for accessibility of many admin screens in Drupal core and contrib.
Not accessible or usable
So far the patches in the issue queue allow users to choose to disable the javascript drag-n-drop and instead keep the weight and parent fields available.
More use of "media" attribute for providing device dependent CSS
By using CSS's "media" attribute we could provide customized CSS for different end user devices (browsers, screen readers, Braille devices, etc.) without interfering with other devices' style sheets.
media=
" { all | aural | braille | embossed | handheld | print | projection | screen | tty | tv } "(see http://reference.sitepoint.com/html/style/media for details)
Keyboard Navigation - Resources & Best Practices
Following the suggestion at Accessibility improvements for vertical tabs here's a page to collect some of the scattered information on keyboard navigation.
Find a Better Name for "skip-navigation" Class
We need to come up with a good name for a CSS class, but I don't want this discussion to clutter up the issue queue. (Let's reserve the queue for presenting and discussing patches that fix functional or programmatic problems.) So I'm posting this item to see if we can develop an idea that is better than the ones we've already come up with.
#drupal-accessibility on IRC
In case we're interested in taking this into IRC, I registered #drupal-accessibility on freenode to chat around coding and accessibility issues and extensions in Drupal.
I'm going to set up logging on it this weekend.
Add colouring (and description) to password checker
There is currently an open issue in the d.o issue queue Add colouring (and description) to password checker (#331893). The issue hasn't received much attention lately and I am curious what thoughts there are from usability and accessibility folks on the proposed patch in comment #36.
This patch essentially tests the password strength and displays a growing colored bar which changes colors depending on password strength. The patch also displays text to represent the strength of the password.
Anybody out there who can help with JQuery to make Drupal 7 accessible?
Mike Gifford (mgifford) and Everett Zufelt are addressing a major accessibility issue for the administration interface of Drupal 7. If they had help from someone with JQuery skills, they could make significant progress. If you think you can help, check out http://drupal.org/node/467296.
Filter <h1>, <h2>, and <h3> from allowed html in comments
The semantic structure of a discussion can be ruined if a comment includes code for headings that are at a higher level than the title of each comment. In discussions in Drupal, the title of the page is an <h1>, key regions are headed with <h2>s (which sometimes do not appear on screen but are available to screen readers to define regions that are obvious on visual inspection), and each comment begins with an h3. So if any heading is added within a comment, it should be no higher than an <h4>, right?
Improving accessibility of menu item descriptions
Within the Drupal menu system descriptions can be added to menu items. These descriptions are often presented as tooltip text through setting the title attribute of the menu item anchor to the value of the menu item description. One example of this can be seen in (Issue #510094) Add description to the link items of the toolbar.
D7 Accessibility Taskforce Meeting Summary (August 24, 2009)
Present on the call
- Mike Gifford
- Everett Zufelt
- Brandon Bowersox
- Valeria Brigatti
- Rob Russell
- Jeff Burns
One week to Code Freeze
On the call we discussed the fact that there is only one week remaining until code freeze. Because of this certain issues need to be prioritized. Some of the current issues in the queue will be able to be fixed after code freeze, others unfortunately will not be fixed for the Drupal 7 release.
Autocomplete
Suggested change to Find Content form
The 'Find Content' form has a prominent place in Drupal 7. However, the form poses accessibility challenges. The filter form is composed of radio buttons and dropdowns that visually correspond for sighted users but there is no indication they correspond for screen-reader users.
I've proposed a change to the Find Content filter form. I'm seeking feedback here and in issue #551034. I believe the change is a win-win for accessibility and usability.
Here is a screenshot of the proposed form:
Nice Menus and accessibiity - menu children not displaying in screen readers (or is it a testing issue?)
I posted this awhile back on the Nice Menus issue queue with no response. Wondering if perhaps I am doing something wrong on the accessibility testing front (using WAVE to check site)....or if someone else has experienced this issue as well:
Drupal in Government (In Canada!)
Glad to see that there is now a Drupal Group for National/Federal & State/Province Drupal installs as well as the previous one for Local Governments. I had tried to set up a general Government Group, but for some reason at the time it was rejected.
D7 Accessibility Taskforce Meeting Agenda & Working Page (August 24, 2009)
Next Conference Call
Monday August 24
11:00am Eastern Time (U.S.) (-05:00 UTC)
If you want to participate please e-mail
everett@openconcept.ca
Agenda
Please feel free to add agenda items.
- Discuss solutions to outstanding problems listed in Everett's blog article Update to the State of Drupal 7 Accessibility.
Participants
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