Accessibility means that your site’s design, interface, and content are available to all users on the internet, regardless of their abilities or the assistive technologies they use. The Accessibility module is a suite of tools for content authors and theme developers to ensure their website is as accessible as possible.

The Accessibility module gives your site maintainer a list of available Accessibility tests, most of which are aligned with one or more guidelines like WCAG 2.0 or Section 508. Tests look for single problems like an image missing an “alt” attribute, or whether headers are used appropriately. Each test can be customized to fit your site’s specific challenges, and customize messages users see for each test so that you can provide tips on fixing accessibility problems within the context of your site’s editing environment.

Note that all modules give feedback by placing a message on the bottom of the page after clicking on a highlighted issue. If you would like to have a popover appear instead, you can install the BeautyTips module.

Roadmap to beta release

The next release (probably a 2.1 release given the amount of work that has gone into it and to signal the change to file structure) of quailjs is needed to get the accessibility module to a beta release. This version will include much more accurate mappings to guideline sections (i.e. WCAG techniques), as well as having all the quail JavaScript code be dynamically buildable, allowing the module to only build quail components that are needed to support enabled tests.

Installation

This module requires the Libraries module, and at least version 2.0.3 of the QUAIL jQuery plugin.

When you enable the Accessibility module, there will be a new Accessibility section available under the Configuration section of your site’s administration menu. Under the Import tests option you can import pre-built Accessibility Guidelines (i.e. WCAG or Section 508), or individual Accessibility Tests into your site. After tests are imported, the Existing tests section allows you to edit the messages users see when an accessibility problem exists on a page. Tests can also have additional fields, just like regular content types.

Modules

The Accessibility module itself is a common framework for checking accessibility of a webpage, but your users won’t see any feedback until you enable one or more of the available modules outlined below.

Content accessibility

To ensure that your site’s content is as accessible as possible, this module checks all fields where users can enter formatting (i.e. the body field of an article). Under the Content section of the Accessibility administration page, you can give users the option to turn these tests on or off using a tab that appears on the bottom of the page. To give users access to view this information, grant them the Check content for accessibility permission under People > Permissions. More installation instructions are available in the Content Accessibility README file.

Testing is run on a per-field basis, allowing you to enable/disable on specific types of content. To enable, check the Check this field for accessibility checkbox in any Long text field. You can also prevent a form from being submitted if there are any problems in the current field for different severity levels (note that in most cases this should only be severe).

Accessibility WYSIWYG

Integrates your accessibility configuration with the WYSIWYG or CKEditor modules, giving your content authors a new button when editing content that checks their work for accessibility problems. After enabling this module, you will still have to add the button to your editor in your WYSIWYG module’s administration section.

Note that there are only two editors currently supported by this module, TinyMCE or CKEditor (3.0 for the WYSIWYG module, and 4.0 for the CKEditor Module).

Accessibility reporting

If you need to run reports on accessibility problems on a page, you can enable on a per-field basis a check that is run whenever content is viewed in the user's browser. The results of the tests are sent back to your Drupal site and can be accessed using Views. The module comes with an example view of a standard accessibility report.

To enable reporting, check the Enable accessibility reporting check box within any long text field's settings.

Theme accessibility

Themes can have a significant impact on accessibility, and this module gives theme developers feedback on potential problems as they build their theme. Once enabled, any user with the Access accessibility theming permission will see a checkbox in the bottom of every page on the site which gives feedback on the entire content of a page.

Important note: This module alters the way Drupal renders a page, and should not be enabled for untrusted users, and should be left disabled for production websites.

Accessibility TestSwarm

To automate accessibility testing, this module integrates the Accessibility module with the TestSwarm module. This module is for developers wanting to integrate automated accessibilty testing into their project. It alters the way Drupal renders web pages and should not be enabled on production sites.

RTBC issues for Accessibility

Filters