Quick Accessibility Patch Accepted Into Core for Drupal 7

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January 20, 2009

For a list of Accessibility issues for Drupal 7.

Wanted to make a brief announcement about a small patch that OpenConcept contributed to Drupal 7 to enhance accessibility.  Drupal's accessibility is quite good, but there are always ways to improve for any software.  In this case someone reported a problem with radio buttons where the tag was not being associated properly with the appropriate form elements. 

I looked at this problem, and rolled a patch for it (which included checkboxes as well) and then attached it to the project.  As was discussed at the March 2008 DrupalCon, unit testing is being implemented to review patches to core before they get accepted.  After re-implementing the patch in a new format it passed and it has been since approved by webchick who is also "Marking back to 6.x for consideration". 

We are going through and looking at ways to enhance the accessibility of a variety of other Drupal projects as time allows.  Currently we are looking at the Add This Button and Audio modules which currently break our site's validation. 

About The Author

Mike Gifford is the founder of OpenConcept Consulting Inc, which he started in 1999. Since then, he has been particularly active in developing and extending open source content management systems to allow people to get closer to their content. Before starting OpenConcept, Mike had worked for a number of national NGOs including Oxfam Canada and Friends of the Earth.