Accessibility for Drupal 8 BoF Notes

BoF at DrupalCon Chicago 2011 3/10/2011 11:00am

Attendees:

Everett Zufelt (via Skype)
Mike Gifford
Jessica Chaiken
Kathy Kahl
Dan Mouyard
Jennifer Hodgdon
John Barclay
Brandon Bowersox

Topics

The group agreed on three topics for the BoF:

1. Gates and guidelines for D8
2. What we missed in D7 to fix for D8
3. Empowering themers and developers with documentation

[Note: I was not taking full notes, so please reply if there are any errors or omissions. -Brandon]

1. Gates and guidelines for D8

Gate process

• Jennifer: we need a Checklist of "how to test" so developers can know what to do to get their code contributed to core
• Question: What about when D7 core currently does not meet our guidelines?
• Answer: That already happens with the Drupal coding guidelines or the documentation rules. Existing code does not meet the rules 100%, but each new patch going forward fixes the code that it touches.
• Brandon: I started a Wiki for Gate Ideas for D8 and proposed WCAG 2.0 Level AA as well as simple rules for requiring form field labels, for example.
• Everett: Level A plus a few hand-picked parts of AA might be a good starting point (rather than all of Level AA).
• Mike: Maybe our standard is AA and we approve exceptions. The group discussed how to handle exceptions case-by-case exceptions.
• Question: Should we approve exceptions to A/AA with an open issue #?
• Jennifer: That was a problem with D7 that Dries wants to solve. We had that problem with documentation where people commit code and then open another issue to write the documentation later. And we still don't have that documentation written.
• Brandon: I agree. When we make an exception we need to know it is a done deal. We are capping criticals at 15 too, all under the premise that we can release at any time.
• Question: Who would make the decision about whether a patch meets Drupals' accessibility guidelines?
• Jennifer: Dries wants to empower people to make decisions. Everett and Brandon, as co-maintainers, could be the point of contact. They would use the whole group to discuss issues and decide about what process is used to come to decisions.

Automated testing

• What parts of this can become SimpleTests?
• Coder Module may be a place for some tests too (if the tests rely mostly on parsing the code but not running it)
• Perhaps a check that requires labels on all form fields could be in Coder Module (there was not agreement about that)
• Examples module is another place to put good accessibility examples and inline documentation

2. What we missed in D7 to fix for D8

• Mike: We need corporate and government and NGO support for doing full accessibility testing of D7
• Jessica: DHHS plus my agency fund this kind of evaluation.
• Jennifer: We might want an "accessibility topical coordinator" as a point person to ask about accessibility. That is the structure the docs group uses (topical coordinators). In fact, we'd like an accessibility contact that can be a liaison with the doc team. Check out groups.drupal.org/documentation-team.
• Everett: ARIA and HTML5 will most certainly be in D8.
• Jennifer: With D8, multi-device output will change our focus. There may be a "context" object available in the theme layer as part of the Butler project.
• Dan: I'm interested in work on HTML5 tools module and theme.
• Roles we may need: Evangelist (Mike G?), Testing Guru (John B?), HTML 5 advocate (Dan?), Docs (Cliff?), Funding/Partnerships (Jessica?).

3. Empowering themers and developers with documentation

• Jennifer: We need 3 things: first, our accessibility guidelines for D8 (the "what"); second, documentation about why accessibility is important (the "why"); third, example code and techniques and tools (the "how").
• Jessica: Personas would be really helpful to show exactly who is impacted. For example: Mary Smith is a 60-year old librarian who is starting to experience hearing and vision loss.
• See the Ubuntu personas here: Accessibility Personas on Ubuntu Wiki
• Data and research is also sometimes helpful to justify the "why".

Next Steps

For the gate process, first we need to finalize our Guidelines on the Wiki for Gate Ideas for D8. Then share that with Dries and the community. Coordinate with other gates (documentation, usability) to learn more about how the gate process will work. Once we have agreed on the guidelines (the "what"), then create the "why" and "how" documentation.

Regarding testing for D7 accessibility and funding issues, I hope there is on-going discussion and action. I also hope we can give ourselves some roles and titles to clarify our team structure.

Mike, Everett and I all felt that we should have a group Skype meeting in a few weeks to coordinate these next steps.

(@mgifford, I grabbed parts of your EtherPad doc for these notes; I hope that is what you intended; thanks for posting those notes!)