Talking Drupal #498 - DOJ Accessibility Ruling

In this episode of Talking Drupal, we discuss the latest DOJ
accessibility ruling and its implications for Drupal with special
guest Josh Mitchell. Josh, a seasoned expert who has led teams in
digital agencies, governments, and non-profits, sheds light on
what the ruling means for state and local governments, the
importance of accessibility, and steps to achieve compliance. We
also explore the Sa11y module, a powerful tool for enhancing
website accessibility, and compare it with the Editorially
module. Additionally, we touch on the upcoming MID Camp 2025.
Tune in for an insightful discussion on making web content more
accessible for all.


For show notes visit:
https://www.talkingDrupal.com/498
Topics

Can you give us an overview of the DOJ Accessibility Ruling

Does this apply to federal websites

When does this go into effect

How does this affect current sites

Hwo is Drupal positioned against this

Does this rule apply to all content such as PDFs

Any tips to organizations

JS widgets

Resources

Announcement of the rule

Full text of the rule - PDF

Fact sheet for meeting the requirements of the rule

https://www.ada.gov/resources/2024-03-08-web-rule/


https://www.drupal.org/docs/getting-started/accessibility/how-to-do-an-accessibility-review



AXE Core

Core issue to automate accessibility tests with Nightwatch.js

Keyboard traps

COTS - Commercial off the shelf software

VPATS - Voluntary product accessibility template

Accessibility Conformance Report (ACR)

Monsido - Acquia optimize - PDF

Josh’s blog post

Guests

Joshua "Josh" Mitchell - joshuami.com joshuami
Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan
John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi
Kathy Beck - kbeck303
MOTW Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu


Brief description:

Have you ever wanted your Drupal site to have a built-in
accessibility tool that could identify things like potential
color contrast issues? There’s a module for that



Module name/project name:

Sa11y



Brief history

It’s worth mentioning that the name is a numeronym, so
spelled s-a-1-1-y, which plays off of a common way the word
“accessibility” is abbreviated



How old: created in Jan 2018 by Bryan Sharpe (b_sharpe) but
the namespace was taken over in Jun 2024 by Mark Conroy
(markconroy) of LocalGov Drupal, so the current 3.0.1 release,
which supports Drupal 10 and 11, is a completely different module
than the original 8.x-1.x branch.

Maintainership

Actively maintained, in fact this module came out of the
ongoing work being done on the LocalGov distribution and
profile

Security coverage

Test coverage: no, but the module is effectively just a
wrapper for the Sa11y library, which is CMS agnostic and used
in the Wordpress and Joomla communities as well

The Sa11y library has its own website, which includes
documentation

Number of open issues: 1 open issues, which isn’t a bug



Usage stats:

62 sites



Module features and usage

We did cover the Editoria11y accessibility checker as
MOTW all the way back in episode #350, almost 3 years ago,
and Sa11y was mentioned at that time. Both modules have had
major releases since then, so I thought this week’s episode
would be a chance to do an updated comparison

Sa11y does include some checks that Editoria11y does not,
such as color contrast checking and a readability score

The Editoria11y module, on the other hand, includes
site-wide reporting that would be helpful for site admins, as
well as a wealth of configuration options including one or
more DOM elements to use as the container to check within, a
list of elements to exclude, and so on. Recent versions of
Editoria11y also include an option for live feedback as you
edit, which should work with CKEditor 5, Paragraphs 5 or
newer, and Gutenberg

At the end of the day, however, both projects are
intended to provide your content editors with immediate
feedback on the accessibility compliance of what they create.
So, it’s worth looking at the feedback each tool provides and
deciding which one is more useful for your team in particular