Learn how Drupal Accelerator can supercharge your online presence and unlock the full potential of your new website build.

The upgrade from Drupal 8/9 to Drupal 10 is considered to be one of the easiest major upgrades in Drupal's history. This is because Drupal 10 is built on the same codebase as Drupal 8/9 and focuses on removing deprecated code and dependencies.

Break down barriers to communication with clear and concise writing

When it comes to web accessibility, a lot of attention gets paid to how to present and structure content. Text size, color contrast, and use of headers are all vital parts of accessibility. Just as important, however, is making sure that the content itself is written in an accessible way.

One of the best ways to do this is by adopting the use of plain language. Plain language is the art of writing clearly and concisely to communicate your message to your audience. It makes information and content easier to read and understand. It helps bridge communication gaps, simplify complex concepts, and promote clearer understanding.

You can find plain language everywhere in society. Medical and legal professionals, educators, and others use it to communicate complex ideas. Federal agencies are required to use plain writing when communicating with the public. Businesses use it to reduce errors and enhance customer service.

Plain language serves as a powerful tool for fostering inclusivity and accessibility. It can help address educational and social inequities. It makes information accessible to wider, more diverse audiences, including:

• Individuals with cognitive and learning differences
• Older adults experiencing a reduction in cognitive skills
• Non-native language speakers

Nearly everyone benefits in some way from the use of plain language. It's a crucial tool for effective communication in virtually any field or context.

Using Plain Language to Update Drupal’s Code of Conduct

Last year, I worked with a group of Drupal community members to update the project’s code of conduct. As part of our process, we created draft language drawn from other open source codes of conduct. We then asked community members from around the world to review and share their feedback. The top piece of feedback we received was to make the language easier to read and understand.

The other codes of conduct we used to create our draft was written at a college graduate reading level. This made it hard to understand, especially for an international audience. Our goal was to simplify the text without losing its meaning and nuance.

• Adopted a more conversational and less formal tone
• Replaced legal and technical jargon
• Removed English-language idioms
• Replaced large words with ones that had fewer syllables
• Broke up large sentences into smaller chunks
• Replaced passive sentences with active ones
• Used tools like the Hemingway Editor and Readable to test for readability
• ChatGPT was not yet available at the time of our project, but if it had been we would likely have used it as well

Despite our best efforts, we were not able to remove every long word or complex sentence. However, we were able to make the text much clearer and more direct. As a result, community members should find the new code of conduct easier to understand and follow.

This experience helped me better understand and appreciate the value of plain language. I learned that it takes a lot of hard work to communicate complex ideas in an accessible way. That work is worth it though, if it helps make the Drupal community more inclusive for more people.

Getting Started with Plain Language

A good starting point for learning more about plain language is Plainlanguage.gov. The site offers resources to help federal agencies follow the Plain Writing Act of 2010.

Guides on how to use plain language to communicate health information can be found at:

• CDC Plain Language Materials & Resources
• Plain Language at NIH

The Center for Plain Language provides plain language resources, training, and advocacy.

While mastering plain language takes effort and practice, its benefits are considerable. It can help break down barriers, improve comprehension, and facilitate better decision-making.

I tend to scribble a lot by Nic McPhee, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Community Content Strategy Drupal Open Source Industries Government Healthcare Higher Education

E-commerce businesses need a robust platform to succeed in this competitive online marketplace. Selecting the perfect e-commerce platform for your business can be a tedious task amidst a sea of solution providers. This is where the likes of BigCommerce and Drupal Commerce come into play, as they offer unarguably the best choices for businesses of all sizes.

While both platforms provide comprehensive solutions for businesses of any size, which one is the perfect fit for you is still a question in many users' minds. By analyzing the characteristics and benefits of both platforms, this article will provide you with the necessary information to make informed decisions without any twinge of regret.

For the first time in over a decade, Centarro will not have a booth at DrupalCon North America. In this post I explain why and share how to find Drupal Commerce content at the event or to plan personal connections in Pittsburgh instead.

While I was eager to exhibit and had already paid, I rescinded my sponsorship after the event added a mask mandate in February. At this point, enforced masking provides dubious benefit to anyone while degrading the conference experience for everyone. It suppresses the value of exhibiting through reduced exhibit hall engagement, impacting all of our sponsors who pay tens of thousands of dollars and help make the event a success. It disrupts the main purpose of gathering together - socializing with and collaborating with our peers. I could not in good conscience ask my staff to exhibit in masks or to consent to the guidelines in advance but ignore them in person, as was the practical result of similar rules in last year's DrupalCons.

Read more

The Goal

When a customer completes checkout on a Drupal Commerce website, the cart order is "placed." No additional changes can be made to the order by the customer. Administrative users, with access permissions, can typically edit these "placed" orders. However, significant changes like the addition/removal or an order item or an order item quantity/pricing change can be problematic. The changes can be made, but... afterwards, things like taxes, discounts, shipping charges, etc. may not be correct.

In previous posts we covered how the Frontend and queue mechanisms can talk with the Backend. We also covered the stand-alone work we’ve been doing within Drumkit to support Drupal on Kubernetes. In this post, we’ll discuss how we plan to integrate this new Backend into the existing Aegir 5 architecture. To integrate the Kubernetes Backend into Aegir 5, we will need to build new top-level entities (see this earlier post about Clusters, Projects, Releases, and Environments) for the Frontend.

Last year at DrupalCon Portland 2022, Dries announced that "Drupal is for ambitious site builders." It refined the "Drupal is for ambitious digital experiences" vision. It chooses to focus on a specific persona and improve their experience with Drupal. It didn't sit perfectly well with me, so I wrote about how improving the Drupal developer experience empowers the Ambitious Site Builder. And with Drupal 10, there has been a huge shift in the development experience for frontend developers. Drupal 10.1.0 will bring even more improvements to the frontend developer experience. One of those will be the new Development Settings form to manage Twig development mode and markup caching.

This week, May 18, 2023, marks the 12th Annual Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD).  Here at Promet Source, we view this annual event as an opportunity to celebrate the 1 billion individuals worldwide – 61 million in the Unites States – who are living with a disability and navigate all aspects of their lives with immense determination. More so than ever before, Promet is aligned with the theme of GAAD 2023: “... to get everyone talking, thinking and learning about digital access and inclusion.”

In this article we are gonna see a few important notes which will be helpful for people who are looking out to host their Drupal application. When selecting a hosting platform for your Drupal website, there are several key factors to consider. Here are some important things to know before making a decision: Compatibility with Drupal: Ensure that the hosting platform is compatible with Drupal&#3

Testing Drupal Websites for Accessibility with WCAG 2.1 Nusrat Fathima 16 May, 2023 Subscribe to our Newsletter Now Subscribe Leave this field blank

Did you know that 1 in 4 adults in the US has a disability*? That's a staggering 61 million people who may be impacted by inaccessible websites. 

As a Drupal developer, you have the power to make a difference by ensuring your site meets the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). In this blog, we'll explore the key features and best practices for testing WCAG 2.1 accessibility in Drupal, so you can create websites that are inclusive for all users.

What is Accessibility (A11y)

Accessibility refers to making a website usable by as many people as possible, particularly regarding people with disabilities. What does A11y refer to? A11y simply refers to the word “Accessibility” where 11 denotes the number of characters present between “A” and “Y”

WCAG and its origins

WCAG stands for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. It is considered to be the standardized benchmark for website accessibility. Created by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), WCAG guidelines are the best and the easiest way of making your website usable for everyone. WCAG guidelines are strictly followed by most government and healthcare organizations in order to ensure that the website abides by accessibility laws (for example, section 508).

Principles of WCAG

There are four major principles of accessibility if you want to adopt WCAG compliance. These follow the ‘POUR’ acronym, which stands for Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust.

Perceivable

In simple words, the content should be detectable to a user’s senses. This means that they must be able to recognize the information that is being presented to them. It includes allowing users to hear audio content clearly and making sure that it is distinguishable from background noise.

Operable

It's all about making sure users can comfortably navigate your website and the interface is user-friendly. There mustn’t be any inaccessible part of the site or any steps that users might be incapable of completing. Should avoid fast-moving and flashing content when designing your web content. It should be made easy to surf the site without a keyboard, also making sure the site is keyboard accessible for users who can’t use a mouse.

Understandable

Users must be able to process the information presented to them and also be able to understand how to use and navigate through the website. This includes making the text clear and readable and predictable to make sure that pages appear in a user-friendly and anticipated way.

Robust

This highlights that the technology could evolve and build your website with future technology evolvements. As a thumb rule, if technology changes and develops, the content should also remain accessible. It also needs to be comprehended by a wide spectrum of users with different disabilities and still remains easy to understand. For example, the site made it compatible to work with the newest version of screen readers.

Why should you comply with WCAG

Below are a few of the advantages of WCAG implementation

• An accessible website builds goodwill toward your brand and improves search engine optimization. Your site will rank more highly in search engine results.
• An accessible website enables greater engagement, reach, and retention since you will have efficiently removed the barriers that prevent an extensive range of people from accessing your content.
• Once WCAG is implemented as part of any website, it is considered standard.

WCAG 2.0/2.1 Success Criteria: The Most Widely Implemented

1. Every input field on the site has an appropriate label
2. Decorative content is implemented in a way that it can be ignored by assistive technology. For example, decorative images ignored by screen readers
3. Captions are provided for all prerecorded audio/video content
4. Sign language interpretation is provided for the audio content
5. A meaningful sequence of content, for example the headings on any page are placed in a sequential order
6. The user is able to pause or stop the audio or control the audio volume independently from the overall system volume for automatically playing videos.
7. The contrast ratio of text and images of text is 4.5:1, and large-scale text and images are 3:1. The contrast ratio does not apply to decorative content or logo or brand name
8. Low or no background audio. The pre-recorded audio/video does not contain any background noise
9. All functionality of the content is accessible via the keyboard interface. There will be no keyword trap.
10. Providing the users with enough time to read through and use the content
11. If the content is time-based, the user is allowed to either pause or adjust the time constraint
12. In case of any fast-moving content such as auto carousels, the user will be presented with options to pause or stop it
13. When the authenticated user’s session expires, the user will be able to continue with the session without loss of data after re-authentication.
14. Page titles, headings, and labels will describe the topic of the webpage
15. Keyboard focus is visible and highlighted well
16. Focusable components will receive focus in an order that signifies meaning and operability.
17. Each section of the webpage is accompanied by its section heading
18. Except for decorative images, all images have meaningful Alt text
19. Audio, video, forms, dropdown menus, anchor text, URLs, and alt text is accessible to the keyboard and screen reader
20. Content clarity adapts according to the zoom level of the page. Content is clearly visible, even on the maximum zoom level
21. The header and footer menu with help context should be available on all pages throughout the site
22. The sites have proper implementation of hover and focus states

Screen Readers

Many people with visual challenges use screen magnifiers and screen readers. A screen reader is software that reads digital text displayed on the screen aloud. Some screen reader examples include:

• Paid products like JAWS (Windows) and Dolphin Screen Reader (Windows).
• Freeware like NVDA (Windows), ChromeVox (Chrome) and Orca (Linux).
• Software built-in the OS(Operating system), like VoiceOver (macOS, iPadOS, iOS), Narrator (Windows), ChromeVox (on Chrome OS) and TalkBack (Android).

Three levels of accessibility

WCAG 2.1 has 3 levels of success criteria

• Level A: All 30 essential success criteria defined in WCAG 2.0 are met. At a minimum, all websites should achieve this level of compliance.
• Level AA: All level A success criteria are met and an additional 28 accessibility success criteria are satisfied. This level achieves a broader accessibility spectrum and is often the goal for most of the development teams to achieve.
• Level AAA: The website should satisfy all three levels of success criteria, including 28 additional success criteria. This level is typically reserved for special sites such as government organizations.

Most of the WCAG-compatible sites widely fall under the accessibility success criteria level A or AA.

Accessibility Testing a Drupal Website

The following are steps followed to perform an accessibility test for a Drupal website

1. Run a Google Chrome Lighthouse audit and fix the highlighted accessibility issues
2. Run a Wave tool audit
3. Validate the keyboard highlight focus and the tab order of the page manually
4. Validate the page with the required screen reader software. For example, VoiceOver
5. Validate the site accessibility on all resolutions such as wide desktop, laptop, tab, and mobile devices
6. Validate the site code using W3C’s validation tools for Markup and CSS
7. Validate the color contrast of the site to make sure it meets the standards (4:5:1) by using a Chrome extensions tool like Kontrast or an application like Color Contrast Analyzer

How Drupal Helps Attain Accessibility Standards

Web development must include accessibility to make sure that websites are functional and accessible to those who have disabilities. Drupal is renowned for its steadfast dedication to accessibility. Take a look at how Drupal promotes accessibility and what tools and features it provides to assist websites to be more user-friendly.

1. Building Accessibility into Drupal

The goal of the Drupal development team has always been to build a platform that is usable by as many users as feasible. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 Level AA requirements are followed when developing the core Drupal platform. This indicates that a variety of disabilities, such as those affecting the visual, auditory, physical, verbal, cognitive, and neurological systems, can access Drupal websites.

2. Default Accessibility features

• With their ability to adapt to various screen sizes and devices thanks to responsive design, Drupal's default themes are usable for those who use mobile devices or assistive technology.
• Drupal creates semantic HTML markup, which aids screen readers and other assistive technology tools in comprehending the website's structure.
• Drupal includes a field for adding alternate text to photos, which aids those who are blind in understanding the website's content.
• Drupal supports keyboard navigation, which is crucial for users who are unable to use a mouse.
• Forms that are easy to use and navigate with assistive technology are generated by Drupal that are accessible.

3. Drupal Provides Plugins & Modules for Accessibility

To improve a website's accessibility, Drupal provides a variety of accessibility modules and plugins that can be deployed. Several well-liked accessibility modules and plugins are as follows:

• Editoria11y Accessibility Checker: This module examines a website for problems with accessibility and makes recommendations for solutions.
• CKEditor Accessibility Plugin: This add-on improves the accessibility of the widely used text editor for Drupal, CKEditor.
• All-in-one accessibility Widget: This module includes an accessibility widget that enables users to change the website's text size, contrast, and other accessibility-related settings.
• A11Y: Form helpers: This module helps make all the Drupal webforms meet the accessibility standards
• Block ARIA Landmark Roles: This module adds additional elements to the block configuration forms that allow users to assign an ARIA landmark role and/or ARIA labels to a block.

4. Strong Community Support for Accessibility

Developers and designers who are committed to accessibility make up a sizable part of the Drupal community. An effort led by the community to make Drupal more accessible to those with disabilities is the Drupal Accessibility Group. The group offers guidance, tools, and best practices for developing ADA-compliant Drupal websites.

References:

https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/disabilityandhealth/infographic-disability-impacts-all.html

Final Thoughts

Drupal is an effective and open-source content management system that provides a variety of features, tools, and plugins to improve a website's accessibility. Because of its dedication to accessibility and the strength of its accessibility-focused community, Drupal is a fantastic platform for building websites that are useable and accessible for those with impairments.
I hope this article provides you with the required insight on accessibility testing with WCAG 2.1. Want to build an accessible Drupal website from scratch or want to make your current site more accessible? We’d love to make that happen! Let’s talk!

Author: Nusrat Fathima

Meet Nusrat, a Software Tester by profession. Nusrat loves reading and learning new things. She enjoys road trips and exploring new places. When it comes to food, she loves to indulge in anything and everything chicken.

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Join us on Thursday, May 18 at 1pm ET / 10am PT, for our regularly scheduled call to chat about all things Drupal and nonprofits. (Convert to your local time zone.)

In this month's informal chat, we'll be talking about local development environments.  Got something specific on your mind? Feel free to share ahead of time in our collaborative Google doc: https://nten.org/drupal/notes!

All nonprofit Drupal devs and users, regardless of experience level, are always welcome on this call.

This free call is sponsored by NTEN.org and open to everyone. 

• Join the call: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81817469653

  • Meeting ID: 818 1746 9653
    Passcode: 551681

  • One tap mobile:
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  • Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kpV1o65N

• Follow along on Google Docs: https://nten.org/drupal/notes

View notes of previous months' calls.

Today we are talking about Working Remotely with Alan Sherry & Jordan Graham.

For show notes visit: www.talkingDrupal.com/399

Topics

• Why is remote work great
• Why is remote work hard
• Tips
• Working internationally
• Large vs small company
• Why do you like working from home
• Why do you think companies are pushing back to the office
• What do you miss about the office

Resources

• Talking Drupal #308 - Remote Work
• snackmagic.com

Guests

Alan Sherry - Drupal Profile

Hosts

Nic Laflin - www.nLighteneddevelopment.com @nicxvan John Picozzi - www.epam.com @johnpicozzi Jordan Graham - @jordanlgraham

MOTW Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz - @mandclu oEmbed Providers Extends Drupal’s ability to embed content from third-party sites.

Jen Lampton joins us! As the co-founder of Backdrop, Jen provides plenty of insight into why Drupal 7’s EOL requires a multi-pronged solution for different customer bases. Mark and Jen dive deep into Drupal alternatives and the challenges behind them, taking a closer look at where Backdrop may fill the gap for some users.

Integration of Apple Pay into Drupal Commerce shop lets you add a safe, secure, and private payment method to your online store. It also increases user satisfaction since Apple Pay is the most popular wallet, with 383 million users worldwide.

If you often feel that you have a lot to accomplish but fall short of time in your business life, you are not alone. A majority of entrepreneurs feel this way. But, thanks to Zapier, you no longer have to worry about the scarcity of time you experience. With Zapier, you can streamline your Automation for website development tasks and focus on growing your business.

Even the most complex Learning Management System can be augmented with Zapier's robust automation platform. While LMS can't accommodate every single use case, Zapier can often provide the best workaround by connecting the apps and services you use and creating automated workflows, known as Zaps. This way, all the repetitive tasks are taken care of, allowing you to focus your time and energy on other tasks that demand your unwavering focus.

You lay down for an afternoon nap, right above you a ceiling fan that has a reflective shiny motor catches your attention. You spend a few minutes tracing the slightest reflection of the room on that shiny motor. Or, amidst busy conversations in a happening room, you get lost, drowning out the noise but are aware enough to observe how people are engaging in conversation and small talk; you were not eavesdropping but simply paying attention. Or while you sit alone in a public space say a cafe, working on your laptop, the intricately designed borders of a wooden cabinet fascinates you, you stay in thought for a good moment and eventually recovering back to finish what work you planned for the day. 

You can’t grow if you constantly crave comfort,  and you certainly cannot move ahead with quality if you are a busy body; too much of a busy body. You have most certainly must have come across the Italian idiom "Il Dolce Far Niente" or The sweetness of doing nothing from the movie Eat Pray Love (you may also have heard it on social media). Between drifting away amidst heavy work and snapping right back, it can be considered balance and balance is beautiful. A break is necessary. 
No matter how nescient this all can sound or however dull your break could be it is as important as crossing out your to do list.  Sitting in front of a laptop, maybe for 2 hours, or for some even an unbothered 4 hours, move around. The 20/20/20 rule; for every 20 minutes of screen time, look at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds.

So if you have pulled a marathon of screen time take this as a reminder to stand up from your chair or stare at the ceiling fan (or at the wall for those that don’t use ceiling fans), but after you quickly skim through what we covered this past week.

The 2023 edition of DebConf is scheduled for September, and Four Kitchens, a digital agency, has underwent a rebranding process. Acquia Engage Is Back to Europe and the deadlines for Drupal Developer Days 2023 are fast approaching. 

amazee.io is a ZeroOps application delivery hub is hosting a Webinar and are also hosting their first ever amazee.io LagoonCon in Pittsburgh. 

Acquia releases a DrupalCon guide and also announced the appointment of its new Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). Jennifer Griffin Smith, a technology industry leader. 

Material announces strategic alliance with Acquia and The Linux Foundation Introduces an Advisory Board.

That's all for this week. 

Yours Sincerely,
Alethia Rose Braganza
Sub Editor, TheDropTimes

 

If the decision of choosing the right Drupal Development Services provider for your LMS development has left you feeling perplexed, you are not alone. It’s natural to get surrounded by the mist of confusion when there are plenty of options available to choose from. As this critical decision will have long-term consequences for your company, it actually calls for a conscientious choice with measured steps. So, what’s the way out?

The answer is knowing against which parameters you should weigh a Learning Management System (LMS) development company and the questions you should ask them. This will help you get valuable insights about the company and make an informed decision.

7 Actionable Steps to Select the Right LMS Development Company

ICFOSS and Zyxware Technologies organized the 5th season of the "Back-To-Work" program for women, with the topic being "Building digital experiences with Drupal". As part of the event, The Director of Programs at the Drupal Association, Von R. Eaton, gave a presentation covering various aspects of Drupal, Drupal.org, and the Drupal Association, followed by a question and answer session with participants. The questions addressed topics such as the cost of Drupal, the necessary skills to work in the Drupal Association, mentoring opportunities, and payment for freelancers contributing to Drupal.

Disabling Twig Caching Just Got A Helluva Lotta Easier (in 10.1)! mherchel Fri, 05/12/2023 - 11:38