Slides from my DrupalCamp Toronto session: Accessibility in Drupal. Presented 2010-10-16. URLs shortened with the weba.im shortener go to Youtube videos.

Accessibility in Drupal

What, who, why, and how?

Everett Zufelt

ICT Accessibility Consultant
Drupal 7 Core Accessibility Maintainer
Fluid Project Accessibility Consultant
HTML WG Invited Expert

What is accessibility?

Perceivable
Understandable
Operable
Robust

Who benefits from accessibility?

Users of mobile browsers
Google and other robots
Users with disabilities (http://weba.im/1ws, http://weba.im/1wx)
Pretty much everyone else

Why make a site accessible?

Human Rights Code
Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA)
Section 508 of U.S. Federal Rehabilitation Act
Increase customers / clients
Morally appropriate action

How to make a site accessible?

Difference between recommendations and regulations
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)
Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG)
Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA)

What is WCAG?

Following these guidelines will make content accessible to a wider range of people with disabilities, including blindness and low vision, deafness and hearing loss, learning disabilities, cognitive limitations, limited movement, speech disabilities, photosensitivity and combinations of these.

What is ATAG?

This specification provides guidelines for designing web content authoring tools that are both (1) more accessible to authors with disabilities and (2) designed to enable, support, and promote the production of accessible web content by all authors.

What is ARIA?

Accessibility of web content requires semantic information about widgets, structures, and behaviors, in order to allow assistive technologies to convey appropriate information to persons with disabilities. This specification provides an ontology of roles, states, and properties that define accessible user interface elements and can be used to improve the accessibility and interoperability of web content and applications.

Improvements in Drupal 7

Themes are resizable with good contrast
Better use of headings
Local tasks (tabs) (http://drupal.org/node/521852)
Table drag (http://zufelt.ca/blog/drupal-7-table-drag-accessibility)

Improvements for developers

Two new system classes to hide content (http://zufelt.ca/blog/drupal-7-two-new-system-classes-improve-accessibility)
Accessible form element titles (http://zufelt.ca/blog/drupal-7-form-api-accessibility-titledisplay)

Improvements still needing work

Screen-reader users disable Overlay (http://drupal.org/node/896364)
Missing form element titles (http://drupal.org/node/882694)
Autocomplete and screen-readers (http://drupal.org/node/515262)

Getting involved

Drupal Accessibility Group (
http://groups.drupal.org/accessibility)
Issue Tracker (http://drupal.org/project/issues/search/drupal?issue_tags=accessibility)
Contact me