ACCESSIBILITY: Drupal

Accessibility Instructions for Drupal Web Publishers

Marketing & Communications manages the Fredonia website and BLUEview digital signage in Drupal CMS. When editing in Drupal, you will need to make sure you follow the WCAG AA 2.1 accessibility guidelines. Highlighted below are some accessibility rules you will need to make sure you are following.

Contents

1. Headings and Text

2. Images

3. Links

4. Tables and Layout

5. Documents and Video

1. Headings and Text

Drupal uses the CKEditor for editing headings and text, as well as simple form fields for short text.

Headings

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Drupal’s Headings

• Use proper heading levels (Heading 2, Heading 3, etc.) from the Paragraph/Headings menu; do not create headings by just making text bold or underlined.

• Make sure you are using the headings in numerical order, not skipping heading order. Always start with Heading 2 as first header. Heading 1 is reserved for page title and is not available for use in editor.

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Wrong headings order (H3, H5, H4)

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Correct headings order (H2, H3, H3)

Text

• Keep writing accurate, succinct, and up to date, following the campus web standards:
  WEB: University Website Standards for Content & DesignPreview

2. Images

• Drupal automatically requires every image to have a descriptive alternative (alt) text that conveys the purpose of the image. The alt text must be descriptive of the image contents so those with visual impairments know what the image contains.

• Images must not contain text, unless the text is short enough that it can appear fully and clearly in the image’s alt text field. While Drupal does not allow custom text colors in Drupal, using text in an image can create low-contrast accessibility issues.

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Alt text is not descriptive

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Alt text is descriptive

3. Links

• Use descriptive link text that explains the destination or action (avoid “click here” or “read more” alone).

• Ensure links are clearly distinguishable and not duplicated with the same text that goes to different destinations.

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Linked text is not descriptive

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Linked text is descriptive

4. Tables and Layout

Tables

• Avoid tables for layout. If you must use tables for data, include proper header cells and clear column/row headings.
  
  

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  Table without caption or headers
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  Add a table caption
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  Add a header row
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  Table with accessible caption and headers

   

Layout

• For complex layouts (including images), use Drupal’s widgets.

5. Documents and Video

• Any PDFs or documents linked from your page should be accessible (tagged headings, readable order, alt text for images). Use document editor (Word, Excel, etc) to check accessibility before exporting. You also can use Adobe Acrobat (Pro version) to ensure the PDF is accessible.
  Digital Content Accessibility
  Accessibility Practices in Adobe Acrobat

• All linked media (video) must contain captions (or audio descriptions if there is no spoken word). The captions should be added in Youtube or Vimeo.
  Accessibility Practices in YouTube