City Access NY

Would you be able to share the results of the JAWS testing on the Drupal Gardens themes? We're always looking to make them more accessible.

Nice job, you can tell a lot of work has gone into this project. Thanks for raising the bar :)

I am helping set up a site for a blind pianist who wants to do his own blog posts. I found when setting up a basic Drupal 7 site on another basic server that we had to turn off all the overlay functions for his JAWS screen reader to be able to access the site. Then we switched to Drupal Gardens for assistance with layout and an economical hosting plan. However, he cannot even log into the Drupal Gardens site because the Log In screen comes up as an overlay. 

I searched through the City Access NY site above and did not see any options for logging in on that site, so I am curious how they manage this. I can turn off overlays, it would seem, within some of the administrative functions for anonymous and authenticated users, but we haven't even gotten that far to test if that is sufficient, since the Log In screen is always an overlay without any way to turn it off. We are planning to abandon Drupal Gardens as being inaccessible unless there is some way to get all the overlay screens for our site disabled, including for Log In. 

Thanks for any help you could offer. The current site is http://elitepianist.drupalgardens.com

pianist, thank you for this comment. I apologize that at the moment, the log in screen must be accessed via an overlay.

Your comment arrives at a crucial moment as we're reconsidering the architecture of this component of Drupal Gardens. Your input will help us as we rethink the design.  I'm sorry this won't provide immediate resolution for you and your client. 

​​​Thank you for your reply. More information about the inaccessibility of overlays in Drupal 7 may be found at these threads on Drupal.org: http://drupal.org/node/1188352 - Accessibility for Blind and Visually Impaired Users - with this post from me (couturier):   "We finally found the problem for Administration Fields accessibility is that in Drupal 7, these are presented as an overlay screen which screen readers cannot access. To allow accessibility for visually impaired website administrators, turn off the Administrative Overlay option under "People" in the Personal Profile for each user. Or, create a new role and turn off administration overlay in the permissions for that role. The overlay module itself can also be disabled."   Similar documentation may be found at this thread: http://drupal.org/node/1268954 - Form Inputs are Inaccessible to Screen Readers

In the months since I posted the last comment, the blind administrator has upgraded his site to a paid version, and we have also noticed that the Log In screen has flipped back and forth from being an overlay to not being one. Again, I'd like to emphasize that overlays once logged in can be turned off, but it is impossible to change the overlay for the log in. JAWS can access these overlays, but only with difficulty. The blind user must refresh the screen multiple times to finally be able to see them, and there is no indication at which time these screens must be refreshed, so it is a guessing game. Please, I would like to request that serious consideration be given to making the Log In screen show up on a separate, dedicated screen with no overlays to allow people who use screen readers to access Drupal Gardens websites. Thanks.

pianist, thank you for holding our focus on access issues. Our current plan for improvements to Drupal Gardens this year includes changes to the login mechanisms that will expand the interaction beyond its now visual-limited method. Accessibility is an important consideration for both Acquia and the Drupal community at large.