Support for Drupal 7 is ending on 5 January 2025—it’s time to migrate to Drupal 10! Learn about the many benefits of Drupal 10 and find migration tools in our resource center.
By LimoenGroen on
Stichting Accessibility (The Dutch Accessibility Foundation) is the center of expertise in the field of digital accessibility in the Netherlands. They support organisations in developing and managing accessible websites and applications. All websites in Europe will be required to be digitally accessible in the coming years. Their own website is thé entrance point for companies and organisations who want to learn about the why and how of digital inclusivity.
LimoenGroen is Drupal expert in Amsterdam and specialised in creating accessible web applications. Together with Utrecht-based graphic design agency Schaapontwerpers we created their new platform. As thought leader in the field of digital inclusivity, their website should of course be fully accessible. It complies therefor fully with the WCAG 2.1 standards and can be easily used by anyone, regardless of place, device and (visual) impairment.
Why Drupal was chosen:
The 12 year old website no longer suited the user groups and needs of the Accessibility Foundation. A new information structure was needed, and the foundation needed a way to easily create accessible content. Drupal (8) was chosen because of its accessibility statement and because its open source and widely adapted. The new website is subject to an independent audit (investigation) to gain clarity about the accessibility of the website. This review follows the WCAG evaluation method and WCAG guidelines, the worldwide standard in digital accessibility. The most recent version is WCAG 2.1 level A or AA.
This also gave the opportunity to optimise for search engines. At the start of the process, a number of the team members obtained a accessibility certificate, accompanied by experts from the Accessibility Foundation. In that training the WCAG 2.1 guidelines were explained, as well as WAI-ARIA and various testing tools.
Describe the project (goals, requirements and outcome):
Together with the Accessibility Foundation, the various user groups have been further researched in order to match as closely as possible what they are looking for, outside-in. The elaboration of the Product Vision Board clarified wishes and requirements and provided the first solutions.
The aim of the new website is to provide IT professionals with support and to inform project managers and product owners about approach and process. In addition, the foundation also wants to highlight its own initiatives and projects and put relevant topics on the agenda.
Current regulations and topics are arranged on landing pages where all practical information can be found easily. Editors can make references to content on the site itself or to external sources. Landing pages are set up for various industries in order to be as relevant as possible for the different target groups.
In addition to providing information and support, the editors of the Accessibility Foundation now have more resources to promote their own projects and events. Special formats have been developed to quickly create attractive business cases with which potential customers can weigh up the usefulness and necessity. The experts are now clearly visible and approachable, so that barriers have been removed to get in touch quickly.
Technical specifications
Drupal version:
Drupal 8.x
Key modules/theme/distribution used:
Why these modules/theme/distribution were chosen:
Codesnippet was very useful to show example HTML code, since part of the target audience of the website are web developers. Paragraphs is used widely to layout pages with structured content. The A11Y Form helpers module is developed during this project to make for errors more accessible.
Community contributions:
The A11Y: Form helpers module is developed during this project to make Drupal forms a bit more accessible. Features that the module adds include disabling HTML5 validation, output readable inline error messages for screen readers and selectable prefill attributes for form elements. Also, several patches for contributed modules were tested/contributed.
Organizations involved:
Sectors:
Education
Government
Non-profit
Technology
