Drupal's documentation needs a page (or set of pages) that explains how you go from installing Drupal to having an accessible website. This is not intended to explain what accessibility is — we'll have another page that does that. The idea is to give developers the quickest, shortest route possible to an accessible site.
If folks want to make an accessible Drupal site, what is the route that they should choose, starting with Drupal 7.
So let's start throwing some information together in this wiki. Don't worry about polish — that can come later.
Lists of items that need to be addressed in the documentation
- What will Drupal 7 core do for me for accessibility?
- Drupal 7 provides you a Forms API that is very accessible. The default themes have also had an accessibility review
- What accessibility features are controlled by the theme? How can I tell if a theme helps accessibility, and how can I make sure that my optional settings improve accessibility?
- The theme can override almost all functionality in Drupal. There are hooks that can be used to overwrite many functions.
- What modules should I consider adding to my site to enhance accessibility?
- Should be ready for D7 - Page Style, Page Title & A11y Titles, Not yet ready for D7 - Accessible Content, Accessible Helper Module, Abbreviations Filter, No longer included: Text Size links don't really add to accessibility
- What do I need to look out for to be sure other contributed modules don't impair my site's accessibility?
- Make sure to add labels in any web forms. Check color contrast.
- What other decisions will I have to make as the site developer?
- Evaluate your site early & often
- What do content contributors need to be aware of so they don't wreck everything?
- Limit access & filter their work using tools like HTML Purifier
- What process should we use to ensure that our site continues to improve it's accessibility?
- Accessibility needs to be seen as a process and possibly with a focus on web adaptability.
Linking to information is fine. Once we've identified and linked the pieces, we'll start polishing the prose.
Draft practice for creating & maintaining accessible Drupal 7 sites
- Start with a Drupal 7 install because of the accessibility enhancements that have been built into it and tested already. Starting with a fairly accessible base reduces the number of things that we will be required to test.
- Build your theme from one which is already committed to accessibility as your base.
- Actively reviewing our site with web based evaluation tools like, WebAim's WAVE which allows you to evaluate the site even before it goes live.
- Add accessibility helper modules to enhance accessibility within Drupal. These haven't been released for Drupal 7 yet, but when they are we can add them in to address known issues.
- Review theme for support for the still draft WAI-ARIA guidelines to see where things like landmark roles & improve user experience
- Define a few representative pages and ensure that they comply with WCAG 2.0 AA's guidelines. Changes can often be done in one place to correct the problems.
- Invite individuals with expertise in accessibility to review the site and give feedback on specific representative pages (home, contact, feedback). If we are specific about the types of pages we will be more able to get feedback that we can apply to the rest of the site. You may need to provide a budget for this if you want a quality review.
- Openly and actively invite people to report accessibility problems. Reporting them should be easy and should provide people with a number of different ways to report problems. This page is of course one of the ones that should be reviewed most closely as there is no point sending someone to a clearly inaccessible web form. CAPTCHA's are a problem as usual.
- As a follow-up it will be important to schedule time to check a random number of pages to find/fix problems that may have developed over time.
Other Notes
I'm cross posting this to the Documentation Team to keep them in the loop.
Just linking this to Keyboard Navigation - Resources & Best Practices. There are some pointers to existing Drupal documentation on accessibility. Perhaps we should just enhance the existing documentation?
Frank
Frank, I agree that we need to enhance the existing documentation, but I would like to also have this clear road map, as it were, to accessibility. Just taking a first read of WCAG 2.0 frustrates many people — and, all things considered, it's really quite readable. So, if possible, I would like this page to be a short guide that helps people who know nothing about accessibility feel comfortable with their ability to create a fairly accessible site — and perhaps even a highly accessible site — in Drupal. And thanks for the links! Good info!
Good to have some case studies: For example The Web Guidelines