5 Reasons to be Excited about Accessibility in Drupal 8
There are a lot of people and projects paying a lot of lip-service to accessibility these days. However, the Drupal project has really taken the bull by the horns and placed accessibility at the centre of its thinking. Drupal 7 is quite an accessible platform, and with a small number of contributed modules, it can be made to meet any accessibility standards set (as long as the developers know what these standards are and how to meet them). Drupal 8 however goes even futher; when launched, it will be the most accessible platform available.
There are a lot of people and projects paying a lot of lip-service to accessibility these days. However, the Drupal project has really taken the bull by the horns and placed accessibility at the centre of its thinking. Drupal 7 is quite an accessible platform, and with a small number of contributed modules, it can be made to meet any accessibility standards set (as long as the developers know what these standards are and how to meet them). Drupal 8 however goes even futher; when launched, it will be the most accessible platform available. The great news is - this will save you time and money; you can have an accessible website easier than ever before.
5 Reasons to be Excited about Accessibility in Drupal 8
- Inclusive editor experience is great for organisations. The larger your team, the more likely that some members will need accessibility features. Drupal adoption is growing fast in the enterprise sector, and accessible tools will help you hire, support and retain the right people for the job.
- Re-usable accessible UI components. As a consequence of views/ctools coming into Drupal core, drop-buttons and modal dialogs, for example have become much more accessibility-friendly. Contributed project can use these to leverage this upgraded accessibility experience, making this an exciting space to watch.
- Coupled with efforts in mobile-first and field API, D8 can provide a much richer experience for sites which collect user-generated content.
- Great accessible markup in default theme templates. Various approaches were taken by D7 base themes, now the mature best-practices from these are in core.
- Improvements in field API let site builders and information architects take a role in accessibility planning. Invisible field headings no longer falls entirely to themer.
With the above being the case, with Drupal 8 about to be released soon, we're massively excited about being part of a more accessible digital universe.
Tom Bamford Accessibility Specialist, Senior Frontend Developer
Tom is our advocate for delivering inclusive, clean, and comprehensive frontend code, meeting WCAG accessibility success metrics. He has spent the last decade highlighting the benefits of component or styleguide driven design, especially in relation to the intersection of PatternLab and Drupal.
