New theme for accessibility

Posted by Steve Lockwood on December 15, 2007 at 10:10am

Hi All,

I have recently uploaded a new Drupal theme, called Flexible. One of the goals was to build accessibility features into the system. These include:
- "hidden" links for speech readers at the start of the page so users can "skip to content" or "skip to navigation" etc.
- built-in alternative style sheets for high contrast, large fonts etc
- ability to "linearise" the content
- support for standard accessibility keys
- the ability for users to store the above preferences so they are loaded automatically next time

(It would be nice if core Drupal supported some of these features directly, but that's another topic.)

I would appreciate any feedback you would like to give about my approach and would be happy to consider further developments. You can download the theme from Flexible or you can see it working at http://equilibrium-business.com.

Steve.

Comments

works very well.

Posted by Dublin Drupaller on December 15, 2007 at 1:13pm

Hi Steve,

Thanks for sharing that.

I think it's the first Drupal theme I have come across with access keys..(i.e. pressing ALT + SHIFT + 1, using firefox, is the same as clicking on HOME) and fine tuned for accessibility.

edited: quick question. Do you know how to add access keys to the flash audio players that come with the audio.module or if it's possible?

cheers

dub

Erm...

Posted by NikLP on December 15, 2007 at 1:51pm

Not to purposely be a wet blanket or anything, but... anything that is built "with accessibility in mind"... um...

The whole thing is built using tables... why would you do that? That's the first thing NOT to do when building accessible websites.

Web Development in Nottingham, UK by Kineta Systems / Follow me on Twitter! @NikLP

After having a look at the

Posted by henrrrik on December 15, 2007 at 2:07pm

After having a look at the Equilibrium site, here are some thoughts:

You really should avoid using tables for layout. Proper separation of presentation and content would remove the need for the "linear layout" option.
The use of acccess keys is considered a deprecated technique. They often collide with browser, screen reader and operating system shortcuts and usually add very little benefit for the user. Screen reader users often prefer to use screen reader shortcuts to cycle through a list of the links on the site instead of using access keys.
HTML validation fails with 93 errors. Not strictly an accessiblity problem, but it certainly doesn't help.
The use of alt text is a bit spotty on the Equilibrium site. Testing with Fangs (or a real screen reader) will help you iron out issues.

hmmm

Posted by mnapthine on December 15, 2007 at 3:39pm

I agree with the guys above I'm afraid, I think you have missed some fundermental things in this theme, looking at your site your logo has a null alt text while the bullet point things have an alt text of signpost (??), things get worse from there :-(

On the whole access key thing the following link shows a lookup table of reserved keystroke combos which should clearly highlight for you the evil that are access keys :-) http://www.wats.ca/show.php?contentid=43

I do like your styleswitcher and was happy not to see purley a font resize feature, the high contrast option is a good addition.

Nice idea, but lets start by addressing the points raised above as this is not what I would describe as accessibile by any stretch of the imagination, sorry if that sounds harsh.

interesting feedback..

Posted by Dublin Drupaller on December 15, 2007 at 9:10pm

Hi again Steve,

some great, constructive feedback there to consider.

I'm not an expert in the tables V div debate, so I'll bow to the experts on that one, but, the great thing about Drupal is that it allows people to not only give some constructive feedback, it allows them to submit patchesand improvements.

hopefully some of the suggestions made will follow through as patches to the theme.

Drupal needs more themes, so thanks again for taking the time to share it on Drupal.org and I'm looking forward to seeing how this develops.

Dub

Thanks for the comments guys

Posted by Steve Lockwood on December 19, 2007 at 10:27am

I will be looking at these and responding in more detail in a while. I'm not completely surprised by most of the comments apart from the access keys one (I used a UK government recommendation). So it's surprising to find out that they are evil (is this part of President Bush's "Access of Evil"?) - I will certainly look into that one.

Steve

access keys

Posted by rkendall on December 19, 2007 at 2:00pm

Hi Steve,

Access keys are currently recommended by the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (from 1999), and hence by government organisations etc., however their recommendation has since been reviewed. As a result, access keys are being dropped as a requirement from the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines v2.0 (which may soon be released).

You could always try something like this: http://www.accessify.com/preferences/accesskeys/

Cheers,
Ross.

What Ross said... and stylesheet switchers

Posted by Cliff on December 17, 2008 at 4:33am

WCAG 2.0 has, in the year since Steve's post, advanced all the way to the recommendation stage. These guidelines are clear, straightforward, and, best of all, testable. They are outstanding guidelines to follow to create a truly accessible theme.

I applaud you in your effort, Steve. I'm new to Drupal, and I was appalled to see how few of its themes are CSS-based. My list of themes to consider when building my church's new site got very short very quickly. At Do It with Drupal in New Orleans last week, I asked twice about accessibility and themes. One presenter dodged the issue by referring to checking for browser compatibility—which made me wonder if he even knew what "accessibility" means. The other pointed out that, in the open-source environment, you get what you pay for. (She didn't quite say that; that's my spin on the gist of it.)

The ability to switch stylesheets is great, but you might want to invest your effort in a stylesheet that is optimized for small screens (e.g., cell phones). I hate to be (another) wet blanket, but a high-contrast stylesheet would be all but useless for the simple fact that you're duplicating functionality already present in the operating system. Both Mac OS and Windows (and, presumably, Linux) allow users to override the display settings of documents to produce a high-contrast view. So you've solved a common problem that, unfortunately, already has a readily available (and free) solution.

Do keep up the good work. I would be interested to see any CSS-based themes you develop.

Hey Steve, I've got to play

Posted by mgifford on January 4, 2009 at 10:44pm

Hey Steve,

I've got to play with this a bit more. Quite like the customizable css you've put into the config for the theme:
These settings only exist for the Flexible 2 theme and all the styles based on it.

I've added it to my list of accessible Drupal 6 themes. I'm looking forward to playing with this theme a bit more and seeing what things can be learned which can be applied to other themes to increase their accessibility.

Mike

OpenConcept | Volunteer Canada | prax.ca

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