Overview

• A brief introduction of myself
• What is accessibility?
• Why accessibility matters?
• Why plone?
• Accessibility of Plone
• Conclusion

Introduction

• Working in the area of ICT accessibility since mid '90s.
• a developer of the FreeBSD Project
• a Unix server admin, a Web admin, an accessibility advocate, a podcaster
• A user of Plone for about 10 years

Definition

• No universally accepted definition (AFAIK)

• Information and/or service can be accessed by "everyone" with virtually "equal cost."

Who Is "Everyone?"

• ability/disability
• age
• situation
• device in use
• language

More focus tends to be put on disabilities, but is actually broader.

"Cost of Access"

• financial cost
• time
• effort required

Key to the Accessibility Is:

• Make everything machine-readable
• Helps assistive technologies to retrieve and present the information in ways suitable for different users

Assistive Technologies

• Software and/or hardware solutions to assist users with specific needs
• Screen readers convey information on and off the screen through speech and/or Braille output
• Screen magnification software provides flexible zoom functions
• Alternate input devices help users with physical impairment

Machine Readability: Example 1

• bitmap image of an alphabet letter vs. text data

Machine Readability: Example 2

• what looks like a heading vs. text enclosed in an h1 tags

What Needs To Be Machine-Readable?

• Content to be presented
• Roles and states of UI elements
• And everything

Besides Machine Readability

• Content needs to be easy for human to read
  • enough color contrast
  • appropriately sized, and resizable letters
• UI should be easy for human to operate
  • predictable behavior
  • consistent structure and behavior
  • sensible timeout and other restrictions
• Audio content should be used sensibly

So What Specifically Content Creators Do?

• Try to comply with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 fromthe World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
• Presentation by Rob Porter gave a good overview

Technical Aspect

• broader audience
• increasing variation of access devices

Social/Legal Aspect

• aging population
• legal requirement
  • Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)
  • Section 508 of the U.S. Rehabilitation Act
  • similar legislation elsewhere

Possible Choices for Me

• Movable Type
• Drupal
• Plone

Requirements As a Content Provider

• Site administration is possible using screen readers
• Multilingual content
• Powerful and flexible content management including workflow

Requirement As a User

• Provided content is completely accessible

Other Factors

• Inexpensive license
• Ease of administration

Why I Chose Plone

• Movable Type was not a practical choice.
• more experience than Drupal

• from a server administrator's perspective:
  • PHP truly sucks
• from a blind programmer's perspective:
  • Python sucks
• but far less than PHP

Which Is the Right Choice?

In Short

• It was good up to around Plone 3 days
• It was outdated in Plone 4 days
• Incomplete, but rather bright looking future with Plone 5

Up To Plone 4

• The accessibility info page that comes with Plone was well written at the time.
• But after a little awhile, it seemed to be forgotten and outdated.

From Stock A11y Info Page (1)

Accessibility Statement

We have undertaken to use our knowledge and understanding of the ways in which different people access the Internet, to develop a web site that is clear and simple for everybody to use.

• sounds promising but...

From Stock A11y Info Page (2)

This site uses the Open Source Content Management System Plone and has been designed to be completely accessible and usable, working in accordance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG v1.0).

Complying With WCAG Is Good But

• WCAG 1.0 was published as W3C Recommendation in May 1999.
• WCAG 2.0 was published in Dec 2008.
• OUTDATED!

From Stock A11y Info Page (3)

Accesskey

This site uses a setup that closely matches most international recommendations on access keys.

• doesn't look bad, but...

Who Uses It Anyway

• these standard keys are rarely implemented.
• not really recognized by users.
• could be considered as useful once, but not any longer

From Stock A11y Info Page (4)

Validation

We have used XHTML 1.0 and CSS that conforms to specification, as laid out by the W3C because we believe that usability and accessibility must have a solid foundation.

• great policy but...

Technology evolves

• is Plone stuck with XHTML 1.0, seriously!?
• as with HTML, accessibility is also a moving target.

Accessibility of Plone Up To Version 4.x

• kupu was inaccessible, at least for me
• No critical issues with generated content
• Content generated by the third-party products is a different story.

Plone 5 And Accessibility: the Bright Side

• Many outdated techniques have been removed.
• The accessibility info page has been rewritten.
• Recent versions of TinyMCE is completely accessible.
• (Hopefully) increasing interest and attention toward accessibility from developers.

Plone 5: Room for Improvement

• Many JavaScript widgets need to integrate WAI-ARIA so that their roles and states would be available to assistive technologies.
• There may be some issues with color contrast with default theme.
• Diazo editor is not accessible.
• Need to raise awareness toward the importance of accessibility throughout the community

Plone 5 Could Be the Right Choice, If

• WAI-ARIA is properly used.
• the default theme is adjusted.
• well-written documentation for theme editing and product development are provided.

Let's Work Closely

• The community of users with assistive technologies need to provide more feedback.

• I'm here to bug you!

Resources for Developers

• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 and its supporting document
• Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines 2.0
• freely available screen readers:
  • NVDA (for Windows)
  • VoiceOver for iOS and Mac OS X
  • TalkBack for Android

Last But Not Least

• Big thanks to the Plone Foundation!!

Today's Slides

These slides are available at:
http://www.accessibility.org/~max/talks/201510-plone.html

Comments and questions are welcome at:

• E-mail:
• Twitter: @mnakane (English) / @ma10 (Japanese)
• And on other social networks