Accessible Content Management Systems
I like the idea of using a content management system for on some projects. However, if accessibility is a priority then options are quickly go from many to far fewer. Fortunately, many of the larger open source content management systems have taken on a goal of achieving some level of accessibility, if only as a byproduct of being standards compliant.
The question of whether a content management is accessible is a complicated one, regardless of what measure of accessibility someone chooses to use. Every content management system has different areas which may or not be accessible. Here are some of those factors:
- CMS generated content When a user submits content to be included for display in a CMS, inaccessible tags/structure is sometimes used to present that content to the end user.
- Template System The template system controls how the content is presented. How much does the system allow the site administrator to define his/her own structure and tags? While all systems facilitate template customization to some degree, many will still require inaccessible tags or structure to be used.
- Administrative Features While the above points primarily reference what a site visitor would see, the tool used to input content also needs to be accessible, whether is is the backend of a website or a standalone application.
- Third-party Plugins The content management systems that I have worked with have all allowed people to develop modules or plugins to provide additional functionality to the system. What kind of guidelines are developers required to adhere to when submitting new modules?
- Anything Else?
That’s a short list that’s too general to really be useful for anything, but may be a helpful framework when looking at different content management systems. With all of the standards based design evangelism out there right now most of the major systems are at least discussing development in a direction that will lead to greater accessibility with some projects already claiming some form of standards compliance. That said, I know at least a couple of people who weren’t found existing systems lacking in the area of accessibility and opted to develop their own homegrown system to meet their needs.
I’m hoping to explore this issue in greater detail- do any of you have any experience with an accessible CMS? Here is a (very incomplete) list of links I’ve recently found on the topic…
- Content Management Systems Can Improve Accessibility (warning: one of his first recommendations is to “generate multiple sites”)
- Content Management Systems: Creating accessible content from a Content Management System (CMS) (good overview that mentions some specific things to look for)
- Mambo (now Joomla!) misc: Section 508 Compliance, Accesssible Mambo fork, Project Orange Mambo accessibility initiative
- Plone, “Plone is known as the content management system that was engineered for accessibility from the very beginning, and it has continued to be the world leader in accessibility compliance.”
- “Client output from phpWebSite is valid XHTML 1.0 and meets the W3C’s Web Accessibility Initiative requirements.”
- Accessible Xoops
- Any other links?
Sorry- comments were turned off earlier, they are on now- thanks.
Interesting stuff…
I think that CMS’s are much like any other authoring tool, they are neither inherently accessible or inaccessible, its all in what one produces with them.
I think that rather than accessibility compliance per se, I would look at the layouts used. If they are tableless/xhtml compliant, its a pretty good indication that accessibility will be a non-issue.
I have had good luck with Drupal and WordPress (yes, I see blogs as just low-end CMS’s).
The notion that Mambo created a separate fork just to address accessibility make me cringe in horror — there is no reason why that should be necessary.
Good points David- fortunately many blogs (and some CMS’s) now completely separate content from presentation, however in my (again limited) experience with some systems there in an inaccessible presentation layer tied into the core of the system. It is those systems that I am referring to. Fortunately more and more systems are moving in the direction of separating content from presentation, but in the meantime I’ll applaud efforts such as the Mambo fork with the hope that at least some of that code will be brought back into the main branch
Great comments. I have been working with Plone for a number of years and was initially attracted to it because at it’s base it is very accessible, as in 100%.
The problem with Plone (and any other system) is that it is very easy to break this by using WYSIWYG editors (Like kupu which comes with Plone). As soon as you use a WYSIWYG editor for your site you end up inserting a bunch of html which basically destroys your accessibility and makes it very difficult for less technical users also.
Plone is a great product but it has a mighty steep learning curve. The average blogger can use it to create very accessible sites but they need to disable the WYSIWYG editor and use Structured Text or standard Text so that the site remains accessible.
My sites are designed so that they are accessible to content contributors as well which also requires disabling (he he he) the WYSIWYG before it disables the users.
My own site is on hold while I develop some sites for an Independant Living Center here in Canada. Nice Blog!