Re: Accessible content management system

Ian,

I had an opportunity to review a drupal powered intranet discussion forum,
and with reference to your second part of the question: “and how accessible
is the output to people using the site”; some positive things regarding
accessibility that were noted during the review are listed:

1.       Focus management was commendable. Screen reader announced Search
results; Error conditions, etc. at the right time.

2.       The skip to links were hidden but visible on gaining focus. The
interesting part was that skip links marked up as <li> contained the
following 6 targets: Skip to Main, Accessibility Info, Site Help, Home,
Search, Play / Pause Slideshow., which magnified on receiving focus.

3.       All pages used landmark roles.

4.       Important sections displayed access keys on pressing the Control
key. This type of implementation does not require a user to remember
keystroke combinations.

5.       All pages stuck to a consistent header hierarchy. The discussion
forum had Responses marked as h5 (and a reference of this made in the
accessibility help section).

As you pointed out, developers’ awareness of various disabilities and how
they apply that knowledge using the tools will determine the outcome. Once
that awareness sets in, I believe all CMS tools you listed can be accessible
to a certain degree. Some webpages really make you feel that project teams
have indeed thought about accessibility at the outset.

There is an interesting post by Mike Gifford called Drupal Accessibility as
an example at http://openconcept.ca/blog/mgifford/drupal-a11y-example  that
may answer your first question.

Thanks,

Devarshi


On Mon, Aug 1, 2011 at 9:22 AM, Ian Sharpe <isforums@manx.net> wrote:

> Does anyone have any suggestions on an accessible CMS please?
>
> I've spent some time researching this, particularly open source CMSs, but
> can't seem to find a definitive solution.
>
> I've seen a review of some of the leading CMS systems from an accessibility
> perspective  that was dated 2006 but nothing since then.
>
> There are 2 sides to this question, firstly how accessible the platform is
> to set up and manage (user permissions, available modules, page creation
> and
> maintenance and module or widget maintenance etc), and how accessible is
> the
> output to people using the site.
>
> >From what I've seen, most of the leading open source CMSs (Drupal, Joomla,
> WordPress, DotNetNuke) seem to provide a mechanism for "skinning" a site
> and
> I have come across some "themes" that say they are accessible, although
> haven't found any examples to verify these claims. But these typically only
> affect the generated site, rather than the site administration interface.
>
> Obviously how accessible a module or widget might be is likely to depend on
> how much consideration the developers of the module or widget gave to
> accessibility, but I would be very interested if anyone has any experience
> or recommendations for an accessible CMS or CMS/Skin/Theme combination.
>
> Cheers
> ian
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