Barrier Free or Barrier Freedom Concrete 5 is.

Permalink
OK, just got off the phone with a contractor out on the left coast. He is a serious Flash Head and gets me to help layout and do the back end work, some database work and some PHP stuff.

He has a possible client he is getting a quote for and one of the requirements is the site must be run on Drupal and be Barrier Free (Barrier Freedom). Now having said (Franz are you listening (BIG SMILE PLEASE cuz I don't know if you did this on purpose)but Concrete 5 is out of the box Barrier Free.

Now this may have been said in earlier posts or comments else where but this is HUGE. The only thing people designing specific blocks will have to do is ensure not table creation is included.

Now having said that (I could be wrong in this) but no other CMS package comes out of the box Barrier Free. This must be reported to the various software reviewers.
The only one that may not be tableless out of the box is fMSPro. But I am not sure.

Has anyone actually noticed this?

bcarone
 
frz replied on at Permalink Reply
frz
Uhh. I remember ADA compliancy and bobby.org, but I must confess I have no idea what barrier freedom is.. Got a URL?

if we're just talking about a clean template - yeah thank the Bauhaus design movement and the nothingness of Plain Yogurt.

I'm not sure if this is press worthy or not, but i can certainly ask...

i mean really? Drupal doesn't have a simple skin that is entirely css based? that strikes me as odd..

I know we're putting some stuff in the header we shouldn't be to pass perfect w3c validation.. that's probably a negative factor in this line of thinking..
bcarone replied on at Permalink Reply
bcarone
You are right in the sense that ADA has set some guidelines for disabled people accessing web sites and Barrier Freedom is a part of that.

Ms Angie Radtke wrote a chapter in the Joomla Book Building Web Sites with Joomla 1.5 and co-authored another book entitled Barrier-free Web Design with M. Charlier. Here is an exert

"However, not everyone can take advantage of this technology. In particular, people that have a physical or mental disability who have difficulties participating in life to the fullest, could benefit tremendously from this communications technology. However, they are often stopped by barriers that it make it difficult or even completely impossible for them to get at the information or to take advantage of the offers. Most of these barriers can be overcome if the technology is designed properly."

Drupal doesn't come out of the box ADA Compliant or "Barrier Free", CONCRETE 5 DOES because of your efforts to follow associative guidelines. YES this is press worthy. It will open many many doors around the world in my opinion and it certainly DOES NOT hurt to let people know that. But yes, both Joomla and Drupal have some templates that are Barrier Free. But not many.

There isn't a lot of discussion on this but there is enough interest that if you started including that (with of course expert verification) in your press releases that word will spread very quickly.

Off my tangent now. Aint it grand having to do a lot of ground work and specification validation for the gov in an earlier life :) That was a pain.

Thanks again for all the hard work Franz
Remo replied on at Permalink Reply
Remo
a lot of concrete5 is "valid", but there are still a few blocks with produce invalid code...

I've been thinking about a way to create "valid custom templates" for a while, because this would make it a lot easier for me, to fix these problems. Unfortunately I couldn't find a good way to fix these problems (yet)

It's press worthy, but only if it is true. Otherwise you will shoto yourself in the foot (is that an English expression?)
bcarone replied on at Permalink Reply
bcarone
I agree Remo and yes...shooting yourself in the foot is a phrase.

Which blocks do not validate? Are you referring to something with a clean install or is it a user supplied one?

Thanks
Remo replied on at Permalink Reply
Remo
Didn't check it right now, but I think the "survey" blocks put some style rules into the body...

There are probably others as well
frz replied on at Permalink Reply
frz
yeah were not far away but we're not there.. the big challenge would be in the inline styles and stuff in header as remo points out..

there are also a few core blocks that do things like nest list elements "improperly" and don't have encoded ampersands...

all "fixable" but a weeks worth of work is a week you're not getting a shopping cart..

I'd love it if some hospital or school wanted to pay us to close the gap there, and it's a small gap - but I think today we'd be shooting ourselves to make that claim..

I'd love to see some "ADA expert" come along and make us a list.. particularly if they had some clout in that scene and their blessing was worth something if we built to their requirements.
synlag replied on at Permalink Reply
synlag
hey bcarone,

thx for starting this discussion.

Barrier free in my opinion, is an important topic in web development, most notably for publishers with lots of text contents and information, but also for social networking and education.

A full validated xhtml and css is a primary precondition to accessibility and barrier freedom; it's just a mini step to get it

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fnutzleistung.de&...

and css?

http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/validator?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fnutzl...

These 100% have been my inspiration to start the shown theme.

Concrete5 is close to full validation, but to keep up, it's necessary to have validated apps (blocks, packages, etc..) too.
frz replied on at Permalink Reply
frz
that is a very important point.. we have a marketplace manifesto that we're trying to finalize in an effort to keep our little project from turning into drupal's nightmare marketplace as it grows.. we'd have to make this a requirement for add-ons...

or at least add-ons that were "recommended" by concrete5.. that puts a considerable push back onto the developer community and would certainly slow down development of add-ons.. (even more)
bcarone replied on at Permalink Reply
bcarone
Thanks synlag

I would have to agree with you on your comments. Frz when I was asked about this Barrier Freedom earlier today, I went and checked out about 10 Drupal and Joomla sites for compatibility. So when I went and checked those monster site you and the team did I saw no cursory problem pertaining to BF.

Now having said that, I will check out the ADA and bobby.org sites again and check on some info along with finding out if they have a team that might be able to check on the a core site (concrete5 clean install, no add-ons or anything and then have them check a few of the big sites you mentioned earlier.

I think since a lot of designer's that have been doing web sites for longer than 5 years are still stuck in tables. Now I agree that they fill certain needs but with the newer requirements, I think all designer's need to get too know these rules better. Yes I will be saying something in the Documentation Forums later this week as it pertains to design and try and get more input from peeps that have built blocks for customers and that sort.

thanks
-Bill
bcarone replied on at Permalink Reply
bcarone
I ran the validating site from W3C on my concrete dev site. It came up with 13 errors. All of them pertaining more to white space or strict following of XHTML. So one error was a "/" not found on a link. 2 start tag warning and 9 errors referring to either a "<" or ">" not being quite right. Now I know I need to look at that code but for an out of the box install...that is pretty damn good. I don't THINK that would cause too many problems with the ADA compliant browsers :)

Anyway...just thought I would through that in there.