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Thread: Best accessible CMS
Number of posts in this thread: 11 (In chronological order)
From: Bossley, Peter A.
Date: Wed, Feb 08 2017 8:42AM
Subject: Best accessible CMS
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Hi everyone,
We are currently in the process of a new website build for my office and I was wondering from the group what the current state is on CMS accessibility. (and in this context, I mean accessibility for content authors who are screen reader or keyboard users.)
Last I knew, Word Press had decent accessibility for authors, and could take markdown, etc. What I'm basically wondering is what CMS lends itself best for content authors who have disabilities to be able to input website content.
We'll have a contractor helping us build our site templates and menu widgets, etc, so will be able to make sure those are built to be accessible.
Suggestions or insights would be appreciated.
Best,
From: Ryan E. Benson
Date: Wed, Feb 08 2017 8:45AM
Subject: Re: Best accessible CMS
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I believe there were a few threads on this very subject in the past month
or so. Have you reviewed those?
Ryan E. Benson
On Feb 8, 2017 10:42 AM, "Bossley, Peter A." < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> We are currently in the process of a new website build for my office and I
> was wondering from the group what the current state is on CMS
> accessibility. (and in this context, I mean accessibility for content
> authors who are screen reader or keyboard users.)
> Last I knew, Word Press had decent accessibility for authors, and could
> take markdown, etc. What I'm basically wondering is what CMS lends itself
> best for content authors who have disabilities to be able to input website
> content.
> We'll have a contractor helping us build our site templates and menu
> widgets, etc, so will be able to make sure those are built to be accessible.
> Suggestions or insights would be appreciated.
>
> Best,
>
> > > > >
From: Joshue O Connor
Date: Wed, Feb 08 2017 10:22AM
Subject: Re: Best accessible CMS
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Hi Peter,
Back in the day - the number of accessible CMS available was very small.
In that they could output/build an accessible UI as well as have an
accessible backend for SR users - or other groups.
It looks like today you have more choice - you mentioned Wordpress, and
I've been very impressed with the backend accessibility of the system as
well as the great work being done by Joe K O Connor/ Joe Dolson, people
in the Wordpress A11y team like Rian Rietveld, Graham Armfield - and
many others in improving the accessibility of themes, backend
functionality etc.
So it is a good choice for many reasons, one - aside from good
accessibility, is that WP is a simpler CMS for many users (with and
without disabilities) to understand and use. This is very important IMO.
For example, again back in the day - Drupal was the de rigeur CMS of
choice for accessibility aware devs etc *but* for content authors/end
users it was total overkill. It's complex, nerdy etc - powerful and all
- but some very simple things were overly tricky for many to do.
So my advise is to strike a balance between good usability for all
users, against a level of accessibility for AT users that is acceptable,
if not perfect.
HTH
--
Joshue O Connor
Director | InterAccess.ie
From: Graham Armfield
Date: Wed, Feb 08 2017 10:48AM
Subject: Re: Best accessible CMS
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Thanks for the name check Josh.
The admin screens in WordPress have improved over the last few years, but
it is true to say that there are areas that can be difficult for some users
- specifically screen reader users, and keyboard only users. As far as I
know however, there are no things that it's impossible to do.
The challenge is that new admin functionality is being introduced with each
successive WP release, and each piece of functionality is often created by
different groups or individuals - some of whom have a less than complete
idea around accessibility. This is the nature of open source projects.
The Make WordPress Accessible Team is very small, and they are all
volunteers. Rian, who Josh mentioned, organises tests of the various admin
functions from time to time and she welcomes comments from anyone -
including AT users. Each of the bits of feedback received contributes to
improvements - but things do take a while to percolate through.
If you wish to contact the Make WordPress Accessible team, visit:
https://make.wordpress.org/accessibility/get-involved/
Regards
Graham Armfield
From: Jennifer Sutton
Date: Wed, Feb 08 2017 11:52AM
Subject: Re: Best accessible CMS
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Though this is not directly relevant to Peter's question about the
administrative side of a CMS, I do think others may find it valuable to
know of the "accessibility-ready" tag for WordPress themes. Here's the link:
https://wordpress.org/themes/tags/accessibility-ready/
And here's the guide for reviewers:
http://make.wordpress.org/accessibility/theme-accessibility-guide-for-reviewers/
Of course, people can easily break a chosen theme's accessibility, but
this is a good start.
And I have recently seen, via Twitter, that the Drupal-verse is becoming
interested in this concept, so "Drupalistas" out there might want to
take a look at this and contribute:
Add project categorization to indicate the module - theme passes
accessibility standards [#2847391] Drupal.org
https://www.drupal.org/node/2847391#comment-11908465
It would be great if Drupal didn't spend a lot of time re-inventing the
wheel, and perhaps these projects could actually cooperate, when possible.
I'm not meaning to coopt this thread, but I do think it's important for
AT users to know about accessible theming, as a starting point, when
possible, not to mention developers.
Best,
Jennifer
From: Terzian, Sharon
Date: Wed, Feb 08 2017 12:17PM
Subject: Re: Best accessible CMS
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Hi
While we are on the subject, is ANYONE using SharePoint? The college is going over to it, I use straight html and Dreamweaver if I have to. Even if it generates 'decent' coding, I can always fix it to some extent...
People here are clamoring for CMS so they can do their own thing
Thanks,
Sharon T.
From: JP Jamous
Date: Wed, Feb 08 2017 12:29PM
Subject: Re: Best accessible CMS
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Sharepoint is accessible. What is not are the various templates designers create.
It is only a matter of how you implement it.
From: Bossley, Peter A.
Date: Wed, Feb 08 2017 2:52PM
Subject: Re: Best accessible CMS
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I should have specified that we are looking for something in the LAMP flavor, so Sharepoint or other windows-based options are out due to our web hosting environment.
From: Rakesh P
Date: Wed, Feb 08 2017 9:29PM
Subject: Re: Best accessible CMS
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Peter,
I am a screen reader user and author of the blog www.maxability.co.in. I am
using wordpress for almost 6 years now and I see a lot of improvement in
terms of accessibility both on the admin end and the content generated. I
am observing at least a feature made accessible in almost every release. I
would definitely recommend WP as a great option.
HTH.
Thanks & Regards
Rakesh
On Thu, Feb 9, 2017 at 3:22 AM, Bossley, Peter A. < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> I should have specified that we are looking for something in the LAMP
> flavor, so Sharepoint or other windows-based options are out due to our web
> hosting environment.
>
>
>
From: Joshue O Connor
Date: Thu, Feb 09 2017 3:37AM
Subject: Re: Best accessible CMS
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Hi Rakesh,
> I am a screen reader user and author of the blog www.maxability.co.in.
> I am
> using wordpress for almost 6 years now and I see a lot of improvement in
> terms of accessibility both on the admin end and the content generated.
Thats great to hear. I also just finished developing a Wordpress site
for a service provider for blind and vison impaired people in Ireland,
and in my tests with friends we found the backend to be very
usable/navigable with a screen reader. So my VIP and blind friends are
now successfully administrating the site *smile.
Thanks
--
Joshue O Connor
Director | InterAccess.ie
From: Mike Gifford
Date: Mon, Feb 13 2017 7:46AM
Subject: Re: Best accessible CMS
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I usually get to this list via Google when I'm searching for some interesting conversation that comes up. That or someone points me to a discussion as happened today.
I've got some vested interests in this, but let's start with some basics.
1) The most accessible CMS is one that is going to be open-source.
Open-source software allows for ideas to be shared back/forth more easily than any other approach to software development. Community driven software allows for people with disabilities to get engaged and fix the barriers that affect them. By having open issue queues, people can easily search to find errors, identify common pain points, and act collectively to fix the problem.
Accessibility is a big challenge. It requires collaboration as it is a journey, not a destination. Processes like the Theme Accessibility: Guide for Reviewers should be replicated where possible in other projects:
http://make.wordpress.org/accessibility/theme-accessibility-guide-for-reviewers/ <http://make.wordpress.org/accessibility/theme-accessibility-guide-for-reviewers/>;
Likewise efforts to replicate centralized:
- CSS classes to provide invisible, hidden & on focus controls
- Tabbing control javascript
- aria-live support
in other projects.
2) We can't just be thinking about the theme layer
It's pretty easy to throw a pretty accessible theme on almost any HTML. Although it is important, it is one of many issues. WordPress is doing some great work with the "accessibility-ready- tag as Jennifer Sutton already noted. This certainly helps people make better choices. Unfortunately a lot of accessibility is about semantics which are deeper than the theme layer of most CMS's. Fortunately both WordPress & Drupal are doing a good job of improving the accessibility of the Core code.
Ultimately it's about changing the culture of developers and designers so that everyone has more awareness about accessibility issues. Drupal has come a long ways and it is clear that WordPress is catching up quickly.
3) An accessible CMS is one that helps authors produce accessible content
Drupal 8's made some real progress on implementing suggestions from the W3C's ATAG 2.0 guidelines. Things like requiring alt-tags on images by default. These aren't simple changes and require more than simply seeing that both the front-end & back-end meet WCAG 2.0 AA guidelines. We've made changes to see that content authors have more guidance in producing accessible content.
If you know your content authors understand accessibility, then this isn't an important feature.
4) Administrators may have disabilities
Since Drupal 7 we have tried to see that we are eliminating barriers at all levels for people with disabilities. You should be able to use the site, edit content, do site administration as well as development. We've focused on Drupal Core, but much of the work we've done in core affects all of the modules & themes because of the APIs that are used. In Drupal 7, administrators with disabilities would have trouble with the contributed Views module, but this has been incorporated into Drupal 8 Core and as such has had it's accessibility improved considerably.
Overlooking the accessibility of administration tools is a big oversight for organizations.
5) WordPress vs Drupal
There's a lot of debate between the two. Ultimately there are some sites that are going to be easier to implement with WordPress and others that are going to be easier to implement with Drupal. It really depends on what you are trying to do. We regularly tell folks to build with WordPress if they want a simple site with a blog. Not that WordPress can't do more than that, but they are generally trying to serve different markets. Drupal's user interface has improved considerably since Drupal 6 and many of the UI comparisons are a bit out of date.
There are things that are much easier to do in Drupal than WordPress. It really depends on what you want to do. It also depends on how your developer is used to doing them. If you are an institution with complex administrator permission which needs to be both multi-lingual and accessible, don't start with WordPress.
Anyways, those are my 2cents from my rather biased perspective.
Mike
--
Mike Gifford, President, OpenConcept Consulting Inc.
Drupal 8 Core Accessibility Maintainer - https://drupal.org/user/27930 <https://drupal.org/user/27930>
Twitter: @mgifford @openconcept_ca
Open source web development for social change - http://openconcept.ca <http://openconcept.ca/>;
Drupal Association Member | Acquia Partner | Certified B Corporation