As an inclusive community, we are committed to making sure that Drupal is an accessible tool for building websites that can also be accessed by people with disabilities.
This initiative started with advancements with Drupal 7 accessibility. We have committed to ensuring that all features of Drupal core conform with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) guidelines: WCAG 2.0 and ATAG 2.0. Where possible, we will also update the previous version of Drupal core, version 6, to enhance its accessibility.
Accessible Features in Drupal
If you rely on a screen reader or other assistive technology, you will be glad to know that we have built Drupal to encourage and support the proper use of semantic markup. For example, you should be able to use headings reliably for page-level navigation.
The accessibility team has worked to identify accessibility barriers with Drupal and worked to resolve them. We've identified and resolved a number of issues in the core code of Drupal 7 and raised awareness within the community. We've added some additional support for Rich Internet Applications by adding some WAI-ARIA support. There have been many improvements to both the visitor and administrator sides of Drupal, especially:
- Search engine form and presentation
- Drag and Drop functionality
- Color contrast and intensity
- Adding skip navigation to core themes
- Image handling
- Form labeling
- Removing duplicate or null tags
Accessibility for Developers
As a developer, you can depend on Drupal itself to have the same features we support in sites created with Drupal. And through D7AX, we make it easy for you to find contributed modules and themes that also support the development of accessible websites.
Drupal Modules and Accessibility
Look for the D7AX hashtag on the page of each module you download for your site. D7AX on the download page means the developer of that module has followed our resources for developing accessible modules. So they have done all they know to ensure that their modules and the content produced by them are accessible.
And you can help them keep that commitment. Each D7AX developer is eager to hear of your experience with their module, especially if you have identified an issue they did not recognize. Perhaps you can help them make a good module great!
Drupal Themes and Accessibility
Many of the accessibility challenges are implemented at the theme layers. As with our contributed modules, the D7AX hashtag marks themes whose developers actively support accessibility improvements. There is also an Accessibility handbook and a Theming Guide Accessibility section that we have published to make it easier for themers to know what are the best practices with Drupal. Ann McMeekin also wrote a great document in the D7UX process for Designing Accessibility Into Themes (PDF) that is worth reviewing.
Accessibility concerns are bugs and should be added to the issue queue for projects where they are applicable. If you have general questions on how to do this, please post a question to the Drupal Accessibility Group. The Drupal community is generally quite responsive to constructive user feedback, so do let us know what we can do to make it work better for you.
Drupal Community Sites
The Drupal community is largely focused around three websites, Drupal.org, Drupal Groups and the API, managed by the Drupal Association. Presently 2 of these are running Drupal 7 and there are known accessibility issues but issues are being addressed where possible. If you have issues that are stopping your participation, please contribute a bug to the issue queue for these projects.
Drupal 7 & 8
Drupal 7 is designed to support the development of sites that comply with WCAG 2.0 and ATAG 2.0. The Drupal accessibility community will be involved in adopting best practices in Drupal 8 as they evolve.