Planet

Yesterday was the third Drupal 7 accessibility taskforce meeting, and the final meeting before code freeze. With September 1 just around the corner the Drupal accessibility community would like to reach out the the broader community for some additional help during this busy time to get as many accessibility improvements into Drupal 7 core as possible.

It was the first sunny day we've had in a week, a perfect day to spend on a patio after work drinking a pint. However 35 people made their way to The Code Factory to attend the Drupal in Government Showcase.

Introduction

I have been encouraged by the increased participation in the Drupal 7 accessibility issue queue in the past few weeks. There are still a number of outstanding issues that are fundamental to improving the accessibility of Drupal 7. Some of these issues can be dealt with after code freeze, others need to be dealt with before.

I believe that Drupal accessibility has to be adopted and fostered at the grassroots level.  Hopefully after code freeze some additional accessibility documentation can be added to Drupal.org and the documentation that is currently on the site can be reordered to make it more useful.  I believe that clear and thorough documentation will lower the barrier for entry into the Drupal accessibility arena, making it easier for community members to get involved who currently don't know where to start.

This morning I had the opportunity to evaluate the accessibility of the d7ux administration theme (Information Architecture) "Seven". My evaluation was not intended to be thorough, or to identify every web accessibility conformance problem, but to get a feel for what the theme will be like for screen-reader users, and what broad accessibility issues need to be addressed.

I must say that from the perspective of a Drupal administrator and screen-reader user that I believe that the theme will be seen as a useful and welcome addition to Drupal 7 by many users. Although there are clearly many accessibility issues to tidy up before Seven is truly accessible, I was surprised at how easy it was to get accustomed to using the iframe "Overlay" panel which appears at the bottom of the page, (if navigated in DOM order).

Today was an exciting day, the first Drupal 7 Accessibility Taskforce Meeting. Don't worry if you weren't able to join us, there are two more meetings scheduled in August.

I am overwhelmingly encouraged by the number of people who were able to take time from their busy schedules to help with brainstorming about some of the important steps involved in ensuring that Drupal 7 is the world's most accessible content management system (CMS). We had at least nine participants and were able to come to consensus on many fundamental issues regarding the accessibility of Drupal 7.

Last week Dr. Sameer Verma invited me to give a presentation on using Drupal's CCK & Views modules at an all day open workshop he was giving to promote FOSS use in preparation for Software Freedom Day 2009 here in Jamaica. It is very nice to see Drupal being recognised as a substantial member of the FOSS comunity.

I want to take a moment to introduce myself and to share my thoughts on Drupal 7 accessibility.

Introduction

I have been loosely involved in web development for 12 years. Over the course of this time I lost my sight due to a degenerative eye disease. When I started using a screen-reader I realized that navigating the web can be very difficult for persons with disabilities, and was somewhat disturbed with all of the coding mistakes that I had made over the years that may have contributed to this problem.

In a multilingual country like Canada, one concern for site developers is how to deal with multilingual site content. The creation of content on the page level is often performed by someone "authorized" to create content, where there is often an option to identify the language of the page. The chief language concern faced by site developers is how to deal with comments that can be submitted by "unauthorized" users in languages other than the primary language of the site.

Web Accessibility

Last week was rather busy week for presentations involving Drupal. Most of them were associated with FOSSLC Summer Camp 2009, which fortunately were being taped by the organizers. The only non-FOSSLC event was participating in a panel discussion organized by the Translation Bureau of Canada.

Drupal Install Workshop

The week's presentations began with Steve McCullough & I leading a Drupal installation workshop. This went quite well for most of the participants because we were starting with a MAMP or WAMP install of the environment and then adding Drupal on top of that. Ran into a couple odd problems by going through this process. One guy had previously set up one or two other web servers and so had some conflicts to work out in his Vista laptop.

This is a reprint of the article originally published in OSBR's May Issue under the title The Feds are Ready for a Change

"OSS is indeed the start of a fundamental change in the software infrastructure marketplace, but it is not a hype bubble that will burst and [the] UK government must take cognizance of that fact." Douglas Alexander

Canada is at the tipping point for acceptance of open source. Open source software (OSS) and culture has reached a critical mass in the business world and it is also being actively deployed within the Canadian government. While open source has contributed outstanding code, its impacts are even more profound, raising core values of participation, co-operation and standardization. However, like many large institutions, there has been reluctance by the Canadian federal government to modernize its official position regarding this approach to software development. There is still considerable investment in existing procurement practice and thousands of jobs and billions of dollars are being invested in old information technology (IT) solutions.

Roger Burkhardt from Ingres summed it up well in a recent presentation to the US Embassy in Ottawa that was well attended by a wide range of Canadian federal departments. He described a perfect storm in which: