Drupal 7 released with added accessibility support

Error message

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Thursday, 6 January 2011 11:23am

Creating accessible webpages using the open source content management system Drupal is even easier after the release of a new version of Drupal on Thursday January 6 2011.

Drupal 7 has over 75 accessibility improvements, including:

  • Support for parts of the WAI-ARIA specification, specifically for auto-complete fields and progress indicators
  • Improved keyboard navigation
  • Improved accessibility for form fields, specifically the correct use for the label tag
  • Search engine form and presentation
  • Accessible drag and drop functionality
  • Addition of skip to main content links that will skip over repetitive content (such as menus)
  • Three new themes with improved colour contrast and accessibility.

In addition, Drupal modules that are marked with the hashtag D7AX have been developed using the resources for developing accessible modules in Drupal. This means that the modules themselves will be close to, if not completely accessible as well as producing accessible content.

Drupal has a very strong Drupal accessibility community who have lead and contributed to the latest accessibility enhancements in Drupal 7. The community is already talking about better accessibility support in Drupal 8, including HTML5 and WAI-ARIA.

We are currently redeveloping our website using Drupal. Stay tuned for the outcome!


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