This issue cropped up recently (I am not sure if it has been discussed elsewhere or even resolved). If it has please let me know. With the advent of version 6 a couple of my vision impaired friends have told me they find it much more difficult to use blocks in version 6. This has resulted in some of them going back to using version 5.*. This issue concerns the keyboard accessibility of blocks. i believe there has been a move towards a "drag and drop" model with blocks when re-ordering page content.
BTW I think Drupal is a really great CMS BTW and is one of the most accessible out there. This is in terms of Drupal allowing a blind screen reader user to administrate the back end and build websites and applications and also of the system itself to be able to output good, usable and accessible content.
I would hate to think that as the application progresses/evolves certain core features that make Drupal one of my favourite CMS are being dropped or replaced.
Thoughts?
Cheers
Josh
Comments
Have they tried turning
Have they tried turning javascript off? The drag and drop stuff all degrades to the old style region and weight dropdowns, so should be as accessible as Drupal 5 at least (I just retested this).
That said, relying on Javascript being disabled for people to use accessibility features is not that great at all, some people may need Javascript enabled for other sites. It is also not obvious! I wonder if it would make sense to have a global "specify order with weights" link or icon (with alt text) that reverts the drag-and-drop stuff - what do you think?
Using blocks
@grugnog said:
Have they tried turning javascript off? The drag and drop stuff all degrades to the old style region and weight dropdowns, so should be as accessible as Drupal 5 at least (I just retested this).
No. I am sighted user so I was thinking more about how users of assistive technology could get around this issue. This would be a less that ideal solution (although it is good that the interface defaults to the accessible working version, so in other words it degrades gracefully). I would rather see via some kind of user preference selection that the user could actively choose their prefered way of using blocks or to use the HTML interface rather than a drag and drop API.
@grugnog said:
That said, relying on Javascript being disabled for people to use accessibility features is not that great at all, some people may need Javascript enabled for other sites.
Yes exactly. There is no reason why a user still can't have JS active in their browser and make some kind of active selection in preferences menu in the back end, or similar.
@grugnog said:
It is also not obvious! I wonder if it would make sense to have a global "specify order with weights" link or icon (with alt text) that reverts the drag-and-drop stuff - what do you think?
It isn't is it? I think the user defined preferences in the global menu would be the way to go with this one.
Thanks for the ideas.
Josh
Talk at DrupalCon BoF about this
There was some talk about an alternate jQuery library that had a nicer fail-over than the one that is presently in Drupal 6.
I was trying to facilitate the meeting so didn't take very good notes. Wrote up some here - http://openconcept.ca/blog/mgifford/accessibility_discussions_at_drupalcon
Lots of folks from that session joined (or were part of) that discussion(s), so would be good if we could get an update or alternate library to review.
People like drag drop, there will be more of it for D7 applications. Gotta make sure it's done nicely.
Mike
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