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From: Kathleen Ballard
Date: Sat, Jun 02 2007 5:30AM
Subject: accessibility of Dot Net Nuke and SharePoint
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My company is considering Dot Net Nuke (DNN) and
SharePoint for use in a fairly large upcoming project.
Because I am the only developer on the teams involved
with any interest in topic of accessiblity, I have
been tasked with collect in information on developing
accessible applications with these 2 products.

The links I have found for DNN are dated 3 or 4 years
ago and refer to much earlier versions (v1 and v2).
Most of the result for SharePoint queries send me back
to Microsoft's.

If anyone on the list has some references or
experiences they can share, it would be very helpful.
I hoping to collect positive features, weaknesses that
should be addressed during the design phase and bugs
that need to be avoided or rebuilt for both tools.

I appreciate any advice you can offer,
Kathleen

From: John E. Brandt
Date: Sat, Jun 02 2007 10:00AM
Subject: Re: accessibility of Dot Net Nuke and SharePoint
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I did an rather extensive analysis of DNN a year or so ago when I was
running my jebswebs website using DNN, but the DNN application crashed one
day and I lost both the site and the database...so the content and all of my
pity comments were lost.

In any case, what I remember from that time was that much of the "engine"
driving the DNN application is "hidden" away in the Windows server which at
various times was .ASP or .NET . I believe the latest iteration of this is
SharePoint.

When I had DNN installed it was the latest version and was running on a
hosted Windows server, I believe running .NET v 2 which was apparently
quite a bit superior to v 1 in terms of accessibility, as well as in other
regards. But there were still serious problems with accessibility in the DNN
application itself and there appeared to be relatively little interest,
attention, or movement in the DNN development community to bring things into
compliance with accessibility requirements or even web standards. The reason
I say "relatively" is in comparison to the significant amount of interest
I've experienced in the "LAMP world." DNN is open-source, but it appeared
that the people in that community were not as aware or interested in
accessibility issues - my impression.

There was one fellow in Sweden, Tim O'Brien - http://www.obrienit.se who has
developed a completely accessible and standards-based DNN site. But it
required significant tinkering with the development side and advanced
knowledge of ASP. He had an article on the DNN site with play-by-play
instructions on how he did this and it was very complex. He was trying to
convince the "powers that be" to integrate these ideas into the next version
of DNN, but I don't think he was having much success. Part of the problem,
as I recall, had to do with DNN's use of tables and Tim's design which was
completely CSS. Apparently, this would not allow all of the old sites to
migrate to a new version. I did converse with him and I sensed some
frustration.

In the meantime, I discovered Drupal and Joomla! and lots of folks in those
communities who understood accessibility and embraced it. So when my DNN
site crashed, I saw it as a calling from God and dumped DNN, and changed to
a Linux host. It was a good move.

I'm not sure how to advise you on this. If your system is already integrated
in SharePoint, you may be stuck needing to stay with that. You may need to
get Microsoft to advise you as they claim their software complies with
Section 508. And you might want to track down Tim.

~j


John E. Brandt
Augusta, Maine USA
www.jebswebs.com

From: Joshue O Connor
Date: Sat, Jun 02 2007 11:50AM
Subject: Re: accessibility of Dot Net Nuke and SharePoint
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John E. Brandt wrote:
> DNN is open-source, but it appeared
> that the people in that community were not as aware or interested in
> accessibility issues - my impression.

Thats my impression also from the digging that I have done for a client
of ours. I haven't looked too deeply but I think that everything gets
outputted into tables when you use Sharepoint. I do tend to agree with
Jukka that the use of tables and potential accessibility problems is a
bit of a myth in accessibility circles, however having said that, it is
not ideal.

If your web interfaces are marked up correctly etc and you stick to good
development/design practices, you should be Ok - if you _must_ use it
but there are certainly much better systems out there such as Drupal and
Joomla.

HTH

Josh

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From: Geoff Munn
Date: Sun, Jun 03 2007 1:10AM
Subject: Re: accessibility of Dot Net Nuke and SharePoint
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On 3/06/2007, at 5:47 AM, Joshue O Connor wrote:

> John E. Brandt wrote:
>> DNN is open-source, but it appeared
>> that the people in that community were not as aware or interested in
>> accessibility issues - my impression.
>
> Thats my impression also from the digging that I have done for a
> client
> of ours. I haven't looked too deeply but I think that everything gets
> outputted into tables when you use Sharepoint. I do tend to agree with
> Jukka that the use of tables and potential accessibility problems is a
> bit of a myth in accessibility circles, however having said that,
> it is
> not ideal.
>
> If your web interfaces are marked up correctly etc and you stick to
> good
> development/design practices, you should be Ok - if you _must_ use it
> but there are certainly much better systems out there such as
> Drupal and
> Joomla.
>
> HTH
>
> Josh


Sharepoint is great for an Intranet, if you're looking to use this as
a public-facing website then you may find it difficult to
customise... it's hard to make Sharepoint look like anything other
than Sharepoint... but it can be done.

DNN is easy to set up, but from there are many browser compatibility
issues to consider (ie, try it on anything other than IE).
Sharepoint outputs everything in tables, but you can use adapters to
convert it all to a CSS layout if you'd prefer.
I am aware of one project (who shall remain nameless) who are using
Sharepoint for a public website and they are rewriting every control
for accessibility purposes. I was impressed because that's a pretty
big job.
If you're tied to the Microsoft platform then your options are
limited and expensive, otherwise you might want to consider Drupal et
al.

I'm keen to hear other people's take on Sharepoint in particular.

Geoff

From: Charge D Wise
Date: Sun, Jun 03 2007 8:30AM
Subject: Re: accessibility of Dot Net Nuke and SharePoint
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SharePoint and DotNetNuke are different products and to latest version of
each use ASP.NET 2.0. Dotnet 2.0 is vastly superior to 1-1.1 for
accessibility and standards based output. SharePoint 3.0 is more accessible
than earlier versions as well. It is far from perfect but you can make if
mostly accessible. I say mostly because many of the defaults are not the
best and if D after all a CMS so you have multiple author issues.

Cheryl D Wise
MS MVP FrontPage
http://by-expression.com
http://starttoweb.com
Foundations of Microsoft Expression Web: The Basics and Beyond

From: John E. Brandt
Date: Sun, Jun 03 2007 10:00AM
Subject: Re: accessibility of Dot Net Nuke and SharePoint
← Previous message | Next message →

>>'
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] accessibility of Dot Net Nuke and SharePoint

I did an rather extensive analysis of DNN a year or so ago when I was
running my jebswebs website using DNN, but the DNN application crashed one
day and I lost both the site and the database...so the content and all of my
pity comments were lost.
>>

Those of course were "pithy" comments that were lost, not "pity" comments.

Is there such a thing as a "Freudian slip" in e-mail?

Hi Ho!


John E. Brandt
Augusta, Maine USA
www.jebswebs.com



-

From: Alastair Campbell
Date: Mon, Jun 04 2007 3:30AM
Subject: Re: accessibility of Dot Net Nuke and SharePoint
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Geoff Munn wrote:
> I am aware of one project (who shall remain nameless) who are using
> Sharepoint for a public website and they are rewriting every control
> for accessibility purposes. I was impressed because that's a pretty
> big job.

Interesting, they might not be the only ones:
http://alastairc.ac/2007/03/sharepoint-2007-accessibility/

Kind regards,

-Alastair

--
Alastair Campbell | Director of User Experience

Nomensa Email Disclaimer:
http://www.nomensa.com/email-disclaimer.html

From: Joshue O Connor
Date: Mon, Jun 04 2007 4:50AM
Subject: Re: accessibility of Dot Net Nuke and SharePoint
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Alastair Campbell wrote:
> Interesting, they might not be the only ones:
> http://alastairc.ac/2007/03/sharepoint-2007-accessibility/

Thanks for posting that Alastair, I look forward to reading it.

Cheers

Josh


********************************************************************

NOTICE: The information contained in this email and any attachments
is confidential and may be privileged. If you are not the intended
recipient you should not use, disclose, distribute or copy any of
the content of it or of any attachment; you are requested to notify
the sender immediately of your receipt of the email and then to
delete it and any attachments from your system.

NCBI endeavours to ensure that emails and any attachments generated
by its staff are free from viruses or other contaminants. However,
it cannot accept any responsibility for any such which are
transmitted. We therefore recommend you scan all attachments.

Please note that the statements and views expressed in this email
and any attachments are those of the author and do not necessarily
represent the views of NCBI


********************************************************************

From: Alastair Campbell
Date: Mon, Jun 04 2007 5:10AM
Subject: Re: accessibility of Dot Net Nuke and SharePoint
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> Thanks for posting that Alastair, I look forward to reading it.

Um, don't get you're hopes up!

Kind regards,

-Alastair

--
Alastair Campbell | Director of User Experience

Nomensa Email Disclaimer:
http://www.nomensa.com/email-disclaimer.html

From: Austin, Darrel
Date: Mon, Jun 04 2007 8:30AM
Subject: Re: accessibility of Dot Net Nuke and SharePoint
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> My company is considering Dot Net Nuke (DNN) and
> SharePoint for use in a fairly large upcoming project.

I assume you mean OR rather than AND? Not that you couldn't use both,
but I'd think it'd make a lot more sense to pick one.

> Because I am the only developer on the teams involved
> with any interest in topic of accessiblity, I have
> been tasked with collect in information on developing
> accessible applications with these 2 products.

Well, you are at a disadvantage by going with ANYTHING .net it seems.
;0)

That said, .net 2.0 is eons ahead of 1.1 in terms of web standards, so
that helps a lot.

The biggest frustration you'll find with Sharepoint is that most of the
web controls still pump out bloated table-based markup. For instance,
menus and *lists* of documents are not actually lists, but rather
tables. To move things to a more semantic, accessible, standards level
of markup, you'll have to gut your masterpages and templates and
probably use some custom web parts to handle things like navigation and
the like. At the very least, you'll want to go in and modify the HTML
markup of some of the default usercontrols.

> The links I have found for DNN are dated 3 or 4 years
> ago and refer to much earlier versions (v1 and v2).
> Most of the result for SharePoint queries send me back
> to Microsoft's.

The BIGGEST frustration with the current version (either WSS 3.0 and/or
MOSS 2007) is the absolute lack of quality documentation from MS. It
took us 5 meetings with Microsoft to even get them to tell us what we
had to purchase based on our requirements. Ugh. ;o)

The biggest nicety about the current version is that it is entirely
ASP.net 2.0 based, so you have MUCH more control over the interface
templates (using masterpages) and actual functionality (you can use any
ASP.net compliant code).

> If anyone on the list has some references or
> experiences they can share, it would be very helpful.
> I hoping to collect positive features, weaknesses that
> should be addressed during the design phase and bugs
> that need to be avoided or rebuilt for both tools.

I've found the yahoo group sponsored by Mindsharp to be very lively and
full of smart sharepoint folks:

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/sharepointdiscussions/

Cameron Moll also just posted a pretty good post with valuable links on
his blog:

http://cameronmoll.com/archives/2007/05/skinning_ms_sharepoint_with_st/

And, finally, there are several MS-Sharepoint blogs worth subscribing
too. These give you a lot more information straight from the developers.

As for .net nuke, I haven't looked at that in a few years and it does
look like the application has made some great strides. If you are
considering .net options, you may also consider Community Server.

As stated, Joomla appears to be one of the few mass-market CMS systems
out there with a focus on getting the code base as standards and
accessibility compliant as possible. They are ahead of the curve
compared to most CMS systems from what I've read/seen. Of course, if you
are a MS shop, then you'll have to battle operations to get them to
consider something like Joomla. ;o)

> I am aware of one project (who shall remain nameless) who are using
> Sharepoint for a public website and they are rewriting every control
> for accessibility purposes. I was impressed because that's a pretty
> big job.

And this, ultimately, is where I get frustrated with MOST, if not all
CMS options. If one is going through the effort of rewriting a majority
of the default code-base, then why not just start from scratch and build
something that meets all of the specific needs of one's own
organization? Granted, Sharepoint dose have a massive framework for
document management and security and the like, so maybe it is a viable
option in this case.

Also, please send them an email and ask them NOT to remain nameless and
share their knowledge with us! ;o)

Or, even better, convince them to ZIP those files up and sell them. The
overhead for purchasing MOSS is immense and I'm sure it'd be easy for a
lot of organizations to justify spending a bit more to get a nice set of
accessible web controls pre-built for them.

Personally, I'd love to hear people comment on MOSS 07 used for public
facing web sites and how effective it is from an accessibility
standpoint. We currently have a home-grown CMS for our public sites, but
with the migration of our intranet to Sharepoint, I'm sure talk will
eventually sprout up about moving our public site to the same framework.

And I also thank you for that link, Alastair!

-Darrel