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Re: Accessible CMS for writer AND reader? Contao? Wordpress? Ghost? Other? And opinions of Markdown for authoring?

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From: Cliff Tyllick
Date: Oct 12, 2015 2:40PM

Jonathan, take a look at Drupal 8. Thf administrative side of Drupal has been accessible to people with visual impairments since later releases of Drupal 6. Drupal 7 introduced a nightmare called Overlay into the interface, and I'm not sure how easy it was to find the hard-won "Turn Overlay Off" switch. (Overlay pushed much of the site administration into modal windows, which had all the barriers that came with early versions of modal windows.) In Drupal 8, Overlay is dead.

Drupal's core—the basic installation—is accessible and does a good job of supporting the creation of accessible content. The base theme supports accessibility. A number of other themes support accessibility, too.

Although I called it the basic installation, Drupal's core includes modules that can be used to build forms and do much more than just develop a basic site.

Other modules—the equivalent of WordPress' plugins—and themes do not necessarily support accessibility, but anyone can develop a module or theme for an open source project. And often modules are built with the thought of solving a specific problem in mind. If a module's developer does not perceive accessibility as a worthwhile goal, no one can force them to adopt that perspective.

Drupal also has an accessibility maintainer who must approve all modifications made to Drupal core. An active accessibility group participated in the review of revisions to core code, modules, and themes.

The choice between Drupal and WordPress probably boils down to which CMS feels more comfortable to your developers. For content contributors, there is no reason to distinguish between the two. The accessibility of the authoring and editing interface depend greatly on choices made by the site administrator.

To be fair, WordPress has made great strides in accessibility recently. But the only reason Drupal hasn't made such great strides lately is that they had already been made years ago.

Whatever system you use, remember that your developers must be comfortable using it. WordPress and Drupal each have their own personality, so to speak, and you need the personality that best fits your team.

Good luck with your search!

Cliff Tyllick
Texas Department of Assistive and Rehabilitative Services

Sent from my iPhone
Although its spellcheck often saves me, all goofs in sent messages are its fault.

> On Oct 12, 2015, at 11:56 AM, Graham Armfield < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>
> Can only speak for WordPress as that's what I've been involved with.
>
> Headline: WordPress accessibility is improving - both on the front end and
> in the admin screens - although there is still some way to go.
>
> Over the last three years or so the Make WordPress Accessible Team (MWAT)
> have raised many defect tickets on the accessibility of the admin screens
> which have resulted in considerable improvements. Now (in theory) all new
> bits of admin functionality will have undergone some kind of accessibility
> testing and remediation before they get adopted into WordPress core.
> Regular weekly accessibility testing sessions are organised by MWAT member
> Rian Rietveld and we're always looking for more people to join in those.
>
> Much of the testing has been with screen readers, not so much with Dragon
> NaturallySpeaking.
>
> Re the front end, any experienced WordPress theme developer who also knows
> about accessibility can build a fully accessible WordPress theme - there is
> now nothing in the core WordPress functionality to prevent that.
>
> Regarding the WordPress theme repository, another MWAT initiative has been
> an additional accessibility part to the Theme Review process. Themes that
> pass this extra check get an accessibility-ready tag. It's currently a
> voluntary to put a theme through this accessibility check, but it's an
> aspiration that eventually all new themes should go through it. Despite
> being optional there has been some take by theme authors and there are now
> 71 themes that carry the accessibility-ready tag - see
> https://wordpress.org/themes/tags/accessibility-ready/. This is up from 32
> in March 2015 and about 15 last autumn.
>
> For me the real problem about accessibility progress lies with WordPress
> plugins. These plugins provide many extras that people like on their sites,
> things that change or add to the markup eg - contact forms, carousels,
> lightboxes, etc.
>
> There is currently no accessibility review in place for plugins, and there
> probably won't be in the foreseeable future. Very few plugin devs have
> actually taken accessibility into account when building the functionality
> so it's quite likely that your perfectly accessible WP site can become less
> accessible when using such plugins.
>
> Hope that helps.
>
>
> Regards
> Graham Armfield
>
>
>
> coolfields.co.uk <http://www.coolfields.co.uk/>;
> M:07905 590026
> T: 01483 856613
> @coolfields <https://twitter.com/coolfields>
>
>> On Mon, Oct 12, 2015 at 3:23 PM, _mallory < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>>
>>> On Mon, Oct 12, 2015 at 02:40:54PM +0100, Jonathan H wrote:
>>> I rather like Markdown, but how is it regarded in the VI community?
>>
>> People I know (who tend to be developers or at least quite comfortable
>> with computers) have said they like Markdown and find it pretty easy.
>> Of course these folks were writing their markdown in text editors where
>> punctuation would be set high like when you're programming, rather than
>> filling in HTML forms (as most CMS admins seem to be these days).
>>
>> However I don't know how non-techies like it, and I'm not sure how
>> easy for people it is to find and fix things like markdown whitespace
>> errors which then do weird HTML grouping sometimes. Usually I notice
>> those visually and then hunt around the md file itself trying to
>> find where some newline might be missing. Bleh.
>>
>> Take this as a single anecdote if nobody has any research. There's
>> also of course the possibility of polling this group yourself, right?
>>
>> _mallory
>> >> >> >> > > > >