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Accessibility Best Practices in Drupal Theming

v's picture
Submitted by v on Sun, 07/27/2008 - 10:55.

Session recording

Attached files

Placement
Session time: 
08/29/2008 - 11:00 - 08/29/2008 - 12:00
Conference booklet summary and bio
Article for conference booklet: 
Many times a client will specify that their site must be "508 Compliant", or, in the UK, be "Compliant with the DDA". Many times the client may never really know what that means, or if in the end the finished project is "compliant". It's always best to educate clients on what it means to meet this requirement. However, to enlighten a client that the WAI by the W3C has the WCAG and that'll help meet the requirements of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 or the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 will often make their heads pop, or make them call another shoppe. Irregardless of what language is used to the client to convey confidence, we, as Drupal code monkeys, have to assure our teams, and the clients, that whatever guidelines or checklists we use will not only meet the customer's needs, but hopefully ensure a truly accessible and more usable product. This round table discussion is meant to showcase the little things in our Drupal workflow that aid us in creating accessible websites.
Bios for conference booklet: 
William Lawrence is a Semantic Engineer & Accessibility Consultant at Quiddities Dev, Inc. He's kept busy with finding meaning in organisation branding and translating that to the Internet. Most often he can be found creating easy to navigate environments leading to content that is easy to consume: engineering the semantics of interaction. (He also enjoys baking chocolate cakes and surfing.)

Overview

Online Presentation Slides

Accessibility should not be considered an option or an add-on. It is the responsibility of the entire team, from the designer, to the coder, to the writer, to the themer, and even to the business development team.

Agenda

  1. Accessibility Guidelines & Drupal
    • WCAG
    • PAS 78
    • Section 508
  2. Themes & Accessibility
    • HTML
    • CSS
    • JavaScript
  3. Modules & Accessibility
    • For administrators
    • For end users

Goals

Fortunately, Drupal has a solid foundation for coding standards and separating its data, logic, and presentation separate from each other. This has greatly contributed to the ease in which to make a Drupal site accessible. But is it enough and could it be better?

Resources

Link to the slide:
http://quiddities.com/presentations/2008/08/drupalcon-accessibility/

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v's picture

This is not just about theming

Submitted by v on Wed, 08/20/2008 - 17:20.

Building any website, regardless of CMS, needs to be accessible. Web accessibility in Drupal goes beyond theming and can be found in the core, in the modules, and the content authoring. I'd like to talk mostly about the theming process of web building, however as we all know there is more to launching a Drupal site than just theming.