A lot has changed since our initial posting about the AODA in 2009. For folks looking for general information (particularly pertaining to the web), I would suggest reading our more recent articles. If you're particularly interested in enforcement of this law I would suggest looking towards posts by Blakes(March 2011), Weirfoulds (July 2011) and FirstReference (August 2011).
Ontario implemented the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) in 2005 and in January 2010 it will begin to enhance the level of services that people in this province can expect from their governments. ...
Accessibility
By Mike Gifford
on 20/08/2009
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. This was the largest Drupal event ever held in Ottawa and it clearly demonstrated that there is interest in this Content Management System.
Having organized the event we wanted to highlight the CLF 2.0 theme that are providing to the community as well as the extensive work that we have done on introducing accessibility enhancements to Drupal.
NOTE: We have since followed up with another...
Having organized the event we wanted to highlight the CLF 2.0 theme that are providing to the community as well as the extensive work that we have done on introducing accessibility enhancements to Drupal.
NOTE: We have since followed up with another...
By Mike Gifford
on 17/03/2009
It's been another big week for accessibility issues & Drupal (and we're just barely at Wednesday). Got another patch committed to Drupal 7 (thanks Angie), but found another couple of bugs to add to the Accessibility Improvement's list. I taped a video of a friend of mine with Cerebral Palsy (Al Shain) trying to create an account and log into Drupal. That was certainly educational, and I've tossed it all up on Youtube with annotations for usability issues.
Presentation Summary
I just came back from a great talk by Mark McKay, who is the Tech Lead of Interaction Design Group at Industry...
Presentation Summary
I just came back from a great talk by Mark McKay, who is the Tech Lead of Interaction Design Group at Industry...
By Mike Gifford
on 12/03/2009
I've been trying to lead the charge on accessibility issues with Drupal 7 leading up to DrupalCon DC. As Dries outlined in his keynote, we've got until Sept 1, 2009 before the feature freeze takes place, so time's precious. Also, as Angie Byron noted, there are some accessibility issues that have been identified but not resolved for years. So, now that WCAG 2.0 is out and there seems to be a renewed interest in accessibility I was quite happy to see the interest in participants at the conference.
Between the two Bird of a Feather (geeky breakout group) workshops that were organized on...
Between the two Bird of a Feather (geeky breakout group) workshops that were organized on...
By Mike Gifford
on 03/03/2009
I think there are a number of ways that Drupal 7 could be much more accessible out of the box than it is right now. I've spent a bit of time working on a few items to improve and document some accessibility enhancements. Spent some time going through WCAG 2.0 documentation & comparing it with Drupal Core. And have been making patches and proposing best practices enhancements for a number of projects.
I'm definitely much more of a PHP/MySQL developer, but the complexity of finding a neat solution that works for SEO, across all major browsers, and also with several screen readers is pretty...
I'm definitely much more of a PHP/MySQL developer, but the complexity of finding a neat solution that works for SEO, across all major browsers, and also with several screen readers is pretty...
By Mike Gifford
on 20/01/2009
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...
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...
By Mike Gifford
on 10/01/2009
I've been blogging a lot recently about accessibility. This was started recently by the work that we have been doing around the Common Look and Feel of Government of Canada websites, but I've been involved in disability issues for a long time and so really would like to see the Internet be friendlier to a whole bunch of people with different abilities.
If WCAG 2.0 is the current path to make information more accessible, it is in my best interests not only to have a checklist of items that our sites need in order to be Level A, AA or AAA compliant or more importantly get as many of them as I...
If WCAG 2.0 is the current path to make information more accessible, it is in my best interests not only to have a checklist of items that our sites need in order to be Level A, AA or AAA compliant or more importantly get as many of them as I...
By Mike Gifford
on 07/01/2009
I started a discussion about the need for unique strings withing the Drupal Groups Accessibility forum. The new WCAG 2.0 standards discourage webmasters from linking to different places with the same text. This does totally make sense and has some reasonable SEO implications as well. "Read more" is useful only if you have the visual reference to know where it is situated. "More about Example Article Title" is a much more descriptive way to link to a new page, but it is harder to program. It's also difficult when you have other types of generic links at the bottom of a list of articles...
By Mike Gifford
on 04/12/2008
I spent two days earlier this week in presentations to largely government employees about accessibility issues. It was organized by GOL Communications and we were invited largely to do with our work on the working to establish a collaborative CLF themes.
There were more presentations about WCAG 2.0 than I'd ever heard prior to this event, and it was interesting to have it broken down int for principals that were pretty understandable. We must all strive to make websites perceivable, operable, understandable & robust. Surely focusing on those priorities as content developers would make...
There were more presentations about WCAG 2.0 than I'd ever heard prior to this event, and it was interesting to have it broken down int for principals that were pretty understandable. We must all strive to make websites perceivable, operable, understandable & robust. Surely focusing on those priorities as content developers would make...
By Mike Gifford
on 18/11/2008
Last week Steve Lecomte and I met with Marquis Coté & Tamey McIntosh with digitalOttawa to talk about CLF 2.0 implementation/training and the launch of their new site commonlookandfeel.ca. It was good to hear about their vision for the site and where they hope to take the community. The site just launched this morning, and it is clear that they will be starting to add a lot of content to the site to help support a move towards compliance. We're looking forward to seeing where this initiative goes and finding ways to collaborate with others in the community.
Steve was able to make it to...
Steve was able to make it to...