D7 Accessibility Taskforce Meeting Summary (July 27, 2009)

On Monday, July 27, we had the first of three planned Drupal 7 accessibility taskforce conference calls. The goal of the call was for those interested in Drupal 7 accessibility to be introduced to each other, and to develop consensus on several fundamental issues surrounding Drupal 7 accessibility

Present on the Call

• Mike Gifford
• Everett Zufelt
• Katherine Lynch
• Brandon Bowersox
• William Lawrence
• Kathy Kahl
• Ann McMeekin
• Valeria Brigatti
• Owen Barton

Apologies

• Mario Batusic
• Jeff Burns
• Leisa Reichelt
• Rob Russell

Accessibility Standards

The accessibility standards by which Drupal 7 core's accessibility should be tested were discussed. Amongst these were several recommendations from the W3C and more specific national standards, such as section 508 of the U.S. Federal Rehabilitation Act.

Consensus for the applicability of the following standards was achieved:

• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0, level 2, or double-A conformance. More information about conformance levels for WCAG 2.0 can be found at Understanding Conformance | Understanding WCAG 2.0.
• Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG) 2.0, part A and B. Minimum level 1, or single-A conformance; ideally level 2, or double-A conformance. More information about conformance levels for ATAG 2.0 can be found atUnderstanding Levels of Conformance for ATAG 2.0.
• Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) 1.0, where necessary to improve accessibility. Note: as including ARIA in xhtml source will currently cause a page not to validate, all ARIA markup must be added with Javascript (JQuery).
• It was decided that as Drupal is an international project that no goals will be set to achieve any nation's specific accessibility standards. However, it is believed that achieving the above goals will go a long way to meeting many national standards.

Assistive Technology - Backwards Compatibility

The compatibility of Drupal 7 with older versions of assistive technology was discussed. Several factors were taken into consideration, including the cost of assistive tecnology. A consensus was achieved as to how backward compatible Drupal 7 core should be in regards to assistive technology.

• All essential functionality of of Drupal 7 core should be available to users of any assistive technology compatible with the browsers that Drupal 7 core supports. These functionalities include, but are not limited to:
  • Navigation
  • Search
  • Consuming content
  • Contributing content
• All other functionality in Drupal 7 core should be accessible to the greatest number of assistive technology versions possible.
• Where functionality cannot be made accessible, for example drag and drop of table rows, comparable functionality should be provided.

Theme Changes

Several theming changes, to use the term loosely, were discussed, including issues regarding hiding content for screen-reader users, the use of headings, and ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications).

Hiding Content for Screen-reader Users

Hiding content for screen-reader users is a technique used when it is desirable to provide a textual representation of a visual concept, without having the text visible on the screen. An example of this would be identifying which tab in a tabstrip is currently selected. An issue is open concerning the development of a system class to provide this functionality at http://drupal.org/node/473396.

Consensus was achieved on the following issues regarding hiding content for screen-reader users:

• It would be ideal to have a system class to hide content for screen-reader users.
• The class needs to have a semantically appropriate namespace and name (suggestions welcome).
• It is not possible to provide a system class to show this content on focus for keyboard only, non-screen-reader users, as the system class will not know where the content needs to appear (be unhidden to).
• Detailed documentation should be provided to explain the use of this class.

Use of Headings

The appropriate use of headings within a page was discussed. Headings help to break a document into logical sections, like the sections in the chapter of a book or a report.

Consensus was achieved on the following issues regarding the use of headings:

• Each page is its own document and should have only one level 1 heading <h1>.
• On the main page of a site this will often be the site title, on subsequent pages of a site this will likely be the node title
• Content under the level 1 heading should be appropriately nested using h2 ... h6.
• Where there are many navigational blocks on a site it may be appropriate to mark each navigational block with h2 or h3 headings.

Use of ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications)

The use of ARIA to improve accessibility for screen-reader users was discussed. One important point that was recognized is that for the time being ARIA attributes cannot be incorporated into markup directly, as it will cause pages not to validate with the W3C validation tools.

The following consensus was achieved regarding the use of ARIA:

• ARIA attributes must be added to elements using Javascript (JQuery).
• Adding ARIA landmarks to the Garland core theme is desirable
• Three user interface controls that can benefit from ARIA are:
  • Drag and Drop
  • Autocomplete
  • Regions of text that update automatically, such as the password strength checker

Open Drupal 7 Core Accessibility Issues

There are several open Drupal 7 core accessibility issues, others are added regularly. The importance of contributing comments and code reviews to the currently open issues was discussed. There are currently several community members creating Drupal 7 accessibility issues and patches, there is also one community member who is working full-time on Drupal 7 core accessibility. The more community involvement there is in the issue queue,the more accessibility issues can be resolved in Drupal 7 core.

The two best pages to view currently open accessibility issues are:

• Community Initiatives, Drupal Core Accessibility page, manually updated and categorized
• Accessibility issues in the Drupal 7 Issue Queue, ordered by most recently updated

Future Meetings and Issue Review Days

Two future Drupal 7 Accessibility Taskforce meetings were scheduled for the month of August. The purpose of these meetings is to discuss open Drupal 7 accessibility issues and to come to consensus on the best solutions to as many issues as possible. The dates and times for the two August meetings are:

• August 10 at 11:00am (EST -05:00UTC)
• August 24 at 11:00am (EST -05:00UTC)

The idea of having two issue review days was also discussed. The purpose of these days will be for interested community members to intentionally comment on open accessibility issues, more than would be done during a standard day. This will help to refine solutions to outstanding issues at a rapid pace, so that changes can be committed to head before September 1. Dates for the issue review days will be announced in advance at http://groups.drupal.org/accessibility .