Alfresco 508 complaint?

[kellis5137]

Hi,
I was wondering if any one has done any research or if there was some documentation somewhere (where I couldn't find it) that shows whether Alfresco is 508 compliant (i.e. accessible to someone with disabilities)?

Thank you in advance for your input,
Keith E

[markp]

I would also urgently like to know the answer to this question.

Thanks

[jbarmash]

From what I understand, we are currently not.  The plan is for 3.0 release to be compliant.

[markp]

Thanks, that's helpful. Do we have a timeline for version 3? It is a condition of our funding from the European Commision that any tool used by the consortium network should meet W3C accessibility standards. This has significant implications for all future projects also.

[dmatejka]

hi
you can find some notes on Jeff Potts' blog

http://ecmarchitect.com/archives/2008/03/13/815

hope it helps

[mikewaters]

Hope this thread is not too stale…

Making the whole of an ECM interface accessible and sexy is very difficult in the face of some of the 508/WAI requirements such as the ban on changing the display without notice and running without javascript. Alfresco's current use of AJAX presents a big obstacle to accessibility compliance at least for these reasons.

Some current Section 508/WCAG 1.0 requirements are admittedly outdated and are close to becoming obsolete with the release of WCAG 2.0, but it may take a little longer for these to filter through to the funding bodies like the EC and their contractual requirements. More contemporary requirements such as WAI-ARIA are a promising alternatives that may allow the sizzle and the access to coexist but they are even further out.

Even if the Alfresco 3.0 webscripts rewrite is nominally compliant it will surely remain a hugely complex interface that will contain untestable accessiblilty barriers that can only be identified by manual testing by experienced users of assistive tools. (This is only an issue if you want real accessibility as opposed to a tick in the box)

But its not all doom and gloom! The webscripts framework is your friend because it allows you to expose simple, truly accessible interfaces to a broad audience, while hiding the complexity of the administrative parts of the web client.

When accessibility is a requirement it will help to minimise its scope by asserting that the standard web client isn't part of the interface at all but just and admin tool. If you can convince the customer of that then you are free to provide accessible webscripts that are not only compliant to the letter of the guidelines, but actually inclusive of a diverse audience.

[veki]

Hello,

AJAX itself is not obstacle to accessibility.  AJAX can be made accessible too. In addition, javascript si not as far as I know banned in Section 508.  Java script can be accessible to if it is made in that way and section 508 assumes that user should be able to control behavior of scripts which does not mean banning the scripts.
I think that accessibility should be one of the highest priorities in the development proces.

Best wishes,

veki

[simon]

I'm with veki on this one. Accessibility isn't hard, it's just another way of thinking. Admitted, it will take some work but the advantages are endless.

Accessibility is more then making a system accessible for disabled people. I myself for instance hate the URL structure in Alfresco. I recently get calls from people complaining the browse.jsp page shows an error… yeah, sure, would be nicer when the URL actually means something. Another one is the session thing in JSF, try to open a couple of Alfresco pages in multiple tabs and Alfresco goes foobar.

It's nice to see 508 is gaining some Alfresco attention. The 3.0 release will be huge when they succeed in implementing everything that is said in the fora.