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Re: Are headless Drupal pages accessible?

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From: JP Jamous
Date: Jun 7, 2018 4:45AM

John,

I did not get a chance to check out the links you provided, but I want to answer your basic question about JS generally.

So many frameworks now use JS to render content. Angular and Node.JS even run server-side, depending on their implementation. So the rule of thumb of turning JS off is dead. If you turn JS in your browser, you won't get much content out of responsive sites.

The important fact to note here is how JS is being rendered and how AT will interact with it. Angular and React would not provide any feedback to an AT if not coded properly. Even keyboard focus won't work if React is not coded with that in mind.

ARIA might be enough for the CMS you will be using. Other components might require some tweaking to make them accessible. That will be something you have to research before deciding on the CMS.

Can I modify components if I have to?
How many of those components render properly in the browser DOM?
How are tables, forms and headings handled through this CMS? Usually, those 3 fail the most.

Those are the questions that would help set you on the right path. Do not be concerned about if the user has JS turned on or off. That's a thing of the past.



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JP Jamous
Senior Digital Accessibility Engineer
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-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of John P. Lee
Sent: Wednesday, June 6, 2018 8:13 PM
To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
Subject: [WebAIM] Are headless Drupal pages accessible?

Hi all,

I was recently asked about the accessibility of headless Drupal by a web designer for a company that wants to ensure that their website design is accessible from the start. As you can see in their message below, they are wondering if they should be concerned about the fact that headless Drupal relies on Javascript to render and serve content. Should that be a deterrent for them? In looking through some of the WebAIM message archives, it seems as though most screen reader users have Javascript enabled nowadays, so using headless Drupal would not appear to be a problem. Is that indeed the case? Does this fall under "best practice"? (Please see the designer's message below):


"We're debating headless Drupal, vs. Decoupled Drupal, vs. traditional coupled Drupal. Here's some info on these three architectural styles https://www.coredna.com/blogs/headless-vs-decoupled-cms



We're wondering about the accessibility of headless Drupal because it relies on javascript to render and serve content.

We found these accessibility guidelines published by WebAim at https://webaim.org/techniques/javascript/

While WCAG 1.0 from 1999 required that pages be functional and accessible with scripting disabled, WCAG 2.0 [Which became the ISO standard in 2012] and all other modern guidelines allow you to require JavaScript.

Which seems to indicate that requiring javascript does not pose an accessibility problem.

... Does it?

In other words, if nothing on a web page were to load when a visitor has javascript disabled (or when their browser doesn't process javascript at all), would that be an accessibility liability, or would we be meeting the accessibility requirements if we choose to only serve content to visitors with javascript enabled?


Thanks,
John