I did a website project for a client recently, using the Concrete5 CMS. The site was for the Ontario Blind Sports Association, so website accessibility was a major concern. After starting the project it became evident that perhaps Concrete5 was not the most accessible CMS, but I adapted some custom code into the site in order to get what the client needed. It wasn't perfect, but there was nothing that the Concrete5 CMS offered in it's addons to achieve a text resize function for those with vision impairments.

I usually build most of my clients' websites in Drupal, which has a module just for this called Text Resize. This client needed more of a user friendly UI, so Concrete5 was probably the better choice on that project overall, but on future projects I will probably suggest Drupal instead. Another reason for this is that there is currently a big push within the Drupal community to make Drupal the most accessible CMS on the web. I can't tell you how many Accessibility issues I have seen posted about in Drupal 7, but it's high time for this sort of realization.

I went to a session at this year's Drupalcon 2010 San Francisco which was strictly about how to make Drupal more accessible to screen readers and other accessibility tools for those with disabilities who use the web. This prompted me to take a step back and look at how accessible my websites are to my readers who may have these types of disabilities or impairments.

Check out the Accessibility in Drupal 6 and Drupal 7: Write accessible modules and themes session I sat in on at Drupalcon SF 2010.

I am pleased to announce that because of all the realization I had at this session and talking with colleagues, from now on I will be making all of my Drupal websites as accessible as possible to all. As you may have noticed already, there is now a Text Resize block on the right side bar at the top of the content on my site, which allows visitors who have some vision impairments to read my content easier by changing the font size.

I also checked my site against the WAVE, Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool, and currently only have 4 errors. These errors seem to coincide with where my Adsense ads are placed and h2 tags that are empty. I will be looking into how I can fix this to make sure my site has 0 errors, or possibly I will change my theme if needed. Below are some screenshots that I took while testing my site.

There seem to be several ways to make sure you are within the standard compliance. The best is to make sure that your CSS and HTML validate. I know, that might sound like a feat of strength, but if you can create a Drupal theme that validates properly, you are well on your way to creating a more accessible Drupal website. You might even make a list like this for the top most accessible Drupal 6 themes. I know, this list is a bit outdated, so I will be working on a new list that will be available soon. I plan to also outline what top sites on the web score for web accessibility, and some of the top Drupal websites. So far, things are not looking good for the web as a whole, so hopefully articles like this and the ones that follow will start to turn the tide towards making all websites accessible to anyone with disabilities, just like any building is.

To test to see how accessible your Drupal or website is, try these online tools:

Accessibility Validators

• WAVE - Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool
• FAE - Functional Accessibility Evaluator
• WDG Validator - Website Design Group Validator

CSS Validators

• W3C CSS Validator - World Wide Web Consortium CSS Validator

HTML Validators

• W3C HTML Validator - Word Wide Web Consortium HTML Validator