[support] accessibility of drupal sites

[Gerhard Killesreiter]

Mohammed Al-shar' wrote:

Hi Mohammed!

> 
> first, I am sorry to have posted this messages to both the themes and the support lists, but I just am not sure where this would fit more.

I am only replying on the support list since I am not subscribed to the 
themes list.


> I am concerned with the accessibility of drupal powered websites for the blind and visually impaired. I have searched the drupal website and read what I could find about this topic but it seems to me that this has received little attention so far. none of the posts I read was elaborate enough.

Our problem is that we don't have blind people who give us input.

> here are some points to contemplate about: 
> 
> 1. for visually impaired users, I want them to be able to change the font size / color / contrast on the fly. one site that does this beautifully, but it's not drupal powered is our strategic partner's website at: www.yourdolphin.com

There is a module somewhere that allows you do change the size of the 
font, IIRC. It should be easy to extend to change the contrast too by 
switching to a different theme. There is a switchtheme module which 
might be usable for this.

> 2. provide keyboard users the possibility of reaching some parts of the website using accesskeys. I know that this method isn't preferred from what I read about it, but may be the listers can share their views about this point. I am blind myself, and never need to use accesskeys as my screen reader has built in commands to reach to various elements on most websites. actually, most modern screen readers have this possibility.

The problem with Drupal is that it is a dynamic application and adding 
access keys automatically is very hard.

It might be possible to include access keys in the path alias definition 
feature, but that would be future development.

> I am thinking that structuring the website's documents well will often be most handy. like using different heading sizes, and using bulleted and numbered lists.

I like to think that Drupal as such is quite good at this.

> the project I am involved in currently is for the company I work for, which specializes in assistive technology for the blind and visually impaired. it's at: www.nattiq.info
> it still requires lots of work, specially that it's going to be multilingual and has a right to left  language. still, I would highly appreciate it if some of you could give it a look and steer me in the right direction. any comments will be warmly welcomed.

I've had a short look. I like the design it is plain and simple (not 
that I am not a designer). What I didn't like are the two images on the 
top of the site. The left image shows a guy who looks as if the earth 
would end tomorrow (very sad). The right shows a couple of people in an 
office. The people on the photo all look rather European and not very 
Arabic. That doesn't really make sense to me.

Cheers,
	Gerhard