I have been loosely involved in web development for 12 years. Over the course of this time I lost my sight due to a degenerative eye disease. When I started using a screen-reader I realized that navigating the web can be very difficult for persons with disabilities, and was somewhat disturbed with all of the coding mistakes that I had made over the years that may have contributed to this problem.
I have been involved in web accessibility for a little over a year now during which time I worked with several organizations, including the Adaptive Technology Resource Centre at the University of Toronto. I have recently accepted a web developer role at
OpenConcept Consulting Inc..
Over the next few months I will be focusing my energy on promoting and improving the accessibility of Drupal 7.
I am greatly looking forward to meeting many of you during our D7 Accessibility Taskforce Meeting.
A couple of blog articles that I posted today on Drupal / Accessibility:
Comments
Form usability
I would love for anything that comes out of this effort, to have re applicable patterns - so we can use it all over Drupal.
http://simplyaccessible.org/
Reusable accessibility improvements
It's definitely the plan to incorporate accessibility functionality into core so that themers, and module developers can take advantage of it. We can use all the help we can get to identify accessibility issues, and to review patches.
Some of the current initiatives include:
Creating a system class to hide content for screen-reader users - http://drupal.org/node/473396
Modifying the forms API to make sure that all checkboxes and radios have a title - http://drupal.org/node/522772
Correcting improper use of labels on administer > build > modules - http://drupal.org/node/511284
Accessibility Consultant & Web Developer - Zufelt.ca
@ezufelt on Twitter | LinkedIn profile
Make sure that, every single
Make sure that, every single issue which inpounds on the UI. Get's an screenshot, or a notice of that.
What's Needed
Hello Bojhan,
We'd love to get your support. Lots of ways that you can become involved to make Drupal 7 and the community of contributed modules accessible. However, it will take a lot of time and ultimately it will take the help of people who are passionate about Accessibility Issues.
You're going to need to test D7, evaluate it, learn about accessibility issues and perhaps even lead/record a couple of focus groups.
We need people like yourself to become engaged in championing a11y issues, talking to developers about best practices and yes taking screenshots.
However, we're already rather involved and can't do this alone. If there are issues that speaks to you, make sure to +1 it in the issue queue! And yes, please attach what you can provide to document it so that the issue is understood.
Mike
OpenConcept | CLF 2.0 | Podcasting
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