E-mail List Archives

Search E-mail List Archives for

Number of posts in this thread: 1 (In chronological order)

From: Isabel Holdsworth
Date: Fri, Sep 28 2018 6:04AM
Subject: Are headless Drupal pages accessible?
No previous message | No next message

Purely a personal opinion here, but I'd go with decoupled Drupal. This
gives you all of the benefits of a headless CMS, with a highly
accessible templating system for your front-ends should you choose to
use it.

Cheers, Isabel

On 07/06/2018, Philip Kiff < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> Headless Drupal refers to the idea of using Drupal for your "back end"
> or database/API and using something else for your "front end" that
> renders the site content into HTML. If you remove Drupal's (very
> accessible!) front end and replace it with your own, then making your
> front end accessible becomes your responsibility. And whether your front
> end is accessible is then entirely up to you and your team, not Drupal.
>
> John P. Lee wrote:
>> We're wondering about the accessibility of headless Drupal because it
>> relies on javascript to render and serve content.
> It is useful here to distinuguish between client-side scripts and
> server-side scripts. I'm not sure that you would absolutely *have* to
> use Javascript to generate database calls - you could probably use PHP
> and MySQL to make database calls like regular Drupal does. But if you do
> use Javascript, then it could run on your server instead of in the
> client's web browser. That's up to you and whoever builds your new front
> end code.
>
> You could also build an "isomorphic" web application that first tried to
> run Javascript in the client browser and then fell back to running it
> server-side if the client failed to run it.
>
> I think the Tonight Show may be using an isomorphic version of Headless
> Drupal based on React:
> https://www.nbc.com/the-tonight-show
> You'll notice that if you turn off Javascript, the site loads up just
> fine, it just doesn't display all the moving parts with their bells and
> whistles. But making it work well in both those browser cases is A LOT
> of work, I am sure.
>
>
> John P. Lee wrote:
>> 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?
> On 2018-06-07 6:45 AM, JP Jamous wrote:
>> Do not be concerned about if the user has JS turned on or off. That's a
>> thing of the past.
>
> I think JP is right that a lot of the accessibility questions related to
> whether your site functions without Javascript may be less of an
> accessibility barrier now. And guidelines and checklists are changing to
> reflect that.
>
> However, if a site does not function without Javascript, then it may
> fail in various other ways: you will certainly lose some percentage of
> visitors because a site that requires Javascript can cause problems for
> people accessing your site using ad blockers, older cellphones, or
> slower connections. The best sites continue to ensure that they work
> well without Javascript.
>
> It is definitely worth asking whether Headless Drupal is the right
> choice for your project, if your team is worried about whether it can
> build an accessible, usable front end that doesn't require client-side
> javascript.
>
> Phil.
>
> Philip Kiff
> D4K Communications
> > > > >