There's been some really great work done looking at usability within Drupal - http://www.d7ux.org/
However, I do think that it is important to start talking about accessibility with any new visions of how content is going to be created and sites are going to be administered.
With the changes that have already been brought into core D7 will be the most accessible Drupal release ever. However, those advances seem to be threatened by the push for a new AJAX interface. Not that AJAX can't be made accessible, but only if it is built with a Progressive Enhancement approach.
We also really need to get basics like display:none; figured out quickly. I've got a sandbox with a working alternative (and some other accessibility enhancements too), but there are quite a few different approaches to implementing this. This basic level of interactivity that is placed throughout Drupal needs to be fixed before we start adding a lot of additional code that hasn't been tested.
There are also accessibility considerations within jQuery and evolving standards for web applications that need to be considered.
Comments
Evaluation Initiative
Hi Mike, Hi All accessibility benefactrs!
I have currently about 10 students of computer science in
my course "Accessible Web Design" and I decided to put them all on evaluating and making redesig recommendations for D7. They have time till May 14. to make their evaluations, till June 18. to recommend improved HTML/CSS code. I installed yesterday a newest D7 for testing.
Because I am new in Drupal development, here some very urgent questions:
Are all the discussed patches already integrated in the CVS version?
If no, is there a place to find them all together?
I think, it is a good idea to evaluate a patched version and not to find out again all the fixed errors. What do you think?
Mario Batusic - Linz, Austria
Mario Batusic - Linz, Austria
Finding the accessibility patches
Hi Mario,
Good to hear about the time-line for your students. Will definitely be important to get them working on this quickly.
Are your students downloading the cvs here - http://drupal.org/node/320
Also for any Mac users there is - http://drupal.org/node/22676
This will give them all of the patches that have been accepted into D7 (and if they update their CVS, all of the changes that get accepted during the time that they are participating).
It doesn't address any of the known accessibility issues that are outlined here - http://drupal.org/node/364629
I agree that it would be useful to not re-create the wheel and to work with the known issues, but not to get limited by them either. I don't think we've hit them all. I think you'd want them to evaluate the patches before applying them on a issue by issue basis. There isn't a space to just download a list of all accessibility patches that have been developed. That being said, I've got most of them in my sandbox here and do run a cvs diff on it so that folks can see how different it is from the core code - http://drupal7.dev.openconcept.ca/
Working from your time-line however I'd try to get them to comment on the evaluated issues and create new ones in May. Expanding the list of accessibility issues in the issue queue is valuable. Building critical mass around issues that are already identified is also important.
In June you can look at posting improved code (which may also included improved php & javascript) to the issue queue also for review.
There does need to be more participation from the accessibility community in the Drupal Issue queue if these enhancements are going to be adopted into core.
The other thing to keep in mind is that realistically folks will be really ramping up D7 implementations in the fall of 2010 (just a guess here, but). If this is the case then we can be a bit bolder about adoption of standards like ARIA.
Mike
OpenConcept | CLF 2.0 | Podcasting
--
OpenConcept | Twitter @mgifford | Drupal Security Guide
come join us!
that's great, you should join us in D7UX: http://groups.drupal.org/drupal7ux
that goes for both of you, of course :]
cheers,
Luciano
Thanks for the invite
I've signed up to the group, but haven't had time to watch it all that closely.
It has been a bit of a stretch of my resources to just keep on top of this list of accessibility issues - http://drupal.org/node/364629
I will try to keep an eye on it though.
Mike
OpenConcept | CLF 2.0 | Podcasting
--
OpenConcept | Twitter @mgifford | Drupal Security Guide
Accessibility Expertise
hi
I just wanted to let you know that we are definitely keeping accessibility at front of mind on the D7UX project,
in fact, in the coming week will be meeting with one of the invited experts on the Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (AUWG) - http://www.w3.org/WAI/AU/ - and we'll be taking advice from her to try to ensure that the work that we do will support Drupal being compliant with the upcoming Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines 2.0
we see accessibility being a critical part of good user experience design, and also think that it represents a great point of differentiation and opportunity for Drupal to be compliant with these guidelines.
starting from next week we will be opening a thread on the d7ux.org website specifically on the topic of accessibility wherein we'll be sharing what we've learned, what our thoughts are, and asking you for your insight and opinion. I'll try to remember to come back and post a link here once it's up, but feel free to ping me and remind me if I don't - we're pretty busy at the moment and my memory is suffering!
look forward to talking to you more about this in the coming weeks
Leisa
leisa reichelt - disambiguity.com
user experience consultant (design research and user centred design)
working with Mark Boulton Design on the drupal.org redesign project
leisa reichelt - disambiguity.com
@leisa
Working within ATAG 2.0 Guidelines
Hi Leisa,
Great to hear that you are meeting with folks from AUWG. There's still quite a challenge to see that content authors are able to use Drupal within the old admin interface. Check out all of the issues listed under Form Enhancements here -> http://drupal.org/node/364629
Certainly for government clients having the admin interface be accessible will be a huge advantage. I can see a great deal of interest in this sector in Drupal, my list of sites currently using it is -> http://delicious.com/mgifford/drupal+government
Wonderful to hear that you see accessibility as a critical part of usability. Next week is pretty crazy for me but I can certainly do what I can to promote your accessibility focus on http://d7ux.org
If we're approaching this from a perspective of progressive enhancement then we're still going to have to solve problems like this one with the select box - http://drupal.org/node/451980
Mike
OpenConcept | CLF 2.0 | Podcasting
--
OpenConcept | Twitter @mgifford | Drupal Security Guide
Update
hi,
Just wanted to let you know that the 'accessibility' thread is now open on D7UX.org. There are a few notes and a short video you might be interested in (it's still pretty high level/strategic, but a good start).
http://www.d7ux.org/accessibility/
We had a great day with Ann McMeekin today - we focussed mostly on the design work we're doing at the moment, and got lots of great feedback from her. She's also been poking around the Groups looking at the accessibility related discussions and we're encouraging her to jump in and give some feedback - so if you see her about, say hi :)
leisa reichelt - disambiguity.com
user experience consultant (design research and user centred design)
working with Mark Boulton Design on the drupal.org redesign project
leisa reichelt - disambiguity.com
@leisa