CMS and Disability Act
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Group Marketing Manager at ALB Accountancy Ltd
01 March 2005 12:21pm
Just looking at CMS for one of our new sites, and was wondering if anyone knows of any systems that meet the requirements of the disability act?!?!
Many thanks
Alex
ADM at Open Text
01 March 2005 13:27pm
hey alex I have heard of Contensis.co.uk apprently they comply with the CMS Disability act. and have one of the best CMS solutions out there, second hand from my boss, hope this helps
Group Marketing Manager at ALB Accountancy Ltd
01 March 2005 13:38pm
On 13:27:35 1 March 2005 Lunchtime wrote:
ADM at Open Text
01 March 2005 13:52pm
On 13:38:30 1 March 2005 MrAlexKing wrote:
CEO at Econsultancy
01 March 2005 14:01pm
Hi Alex
Unless I'm very much mistaken, it's not really question of looking for a CMS that meets the requirements of the disability act. All a CMS does is manage, store and display content - so in that sense it's a "dumb computer" which will only do what you instruct it to. You are the one responsible for accessibility compliance, not your CMS.
It's how you choose to display / render the content to the screen, and the nature of the content itself, and the display code you use that make a site accessible or not. This has nothing to do with the CMS per se - you can use any CMS to display non-accessible or accessible content as you choose.
So unless there's a CMS whose USP is to render text content only as images with no supporting content or information, with links stripped out, then I would say ALL CMSs are still open to you.
As an example of how NOT to do it, take a look at Manchester United's entry page (http://www.manutd.com). I'd be very surprised indeed if they're not using a CMS but that page is still quite outstandingly in-accessible, particuarly given their user base. All it consists of is 4 images with no text, no alt text, no long descriptions, no nothing. I'd be very unimpressed indeed as a Man United fan trying to browse that site with a screen reader. (they do provide an accessible version at http://www.manutd.com/access but you'd have to get through the splash page first)
Ashley
On 12:21:26 1 March 2005 MrAlexKing wrote:
Managing Director at Squiz.co.uk
01 March 2005 17:33pm
How much the implementation costs depends on your requirements, how closely the CMS matches them and what skills you have in-house - not on whether or not it's open source.
I'm sure compliance with the disability act is one of several important requirements that need to be understood before a particular product can be recommended. However, in the open source space have a look at:
Zope www.zope.org (python)
Redhat CMS http://ccm.redhat.com/ (J2EE)
Matrix http://matrix.squiz.net (PHP)
Magnolia http://www.magnolia.info/en/community.html (J2EE)
If you give me some more information about preferred technology platform, other requirements, etc I can narrow this down for you.
Cheers,
Steve
MrAlexKing
On 13:52:52 1 March 2005 Lunchtime wrote:
>I don't want to dishearten you alex; in an ideal world
>open source can be a designers paradise but can break the
>bank in implimentation. I keep raving about
>contensis because the implimentation time is minimal, and
>they provide full technical support at every stage. the
>cost to service ratio has benefited our business,
>intergrating old text and systems, from the off set.
>
>On 13:38:30 1 March 2005 MrAlexKing wrote:
>
>Thanks for for the reply but I was thinking along the
>lines of open source. Any ideas?
>
>On 13:27:35 1 March 2005 Lunchtime wrote:
>
>hey alex I have heard of Contensis.co.uk apprently they
>comply with the CMS Disability act. and have one of the
>best CMS solutions out there, second hand from my boss,
>hope this helps
Managing Director at Squiz.co.uk
01 March 2005 18:02pm
Hi Ashley,
I agree with you, except that a lot of CMS now provide tools which make it easier to enforce accessibility compliance.
A good example of this is 'WYSIWYG' editors provided in most CMS. Some of them have inconsistencies in the HTML they produce which makes maintaining an accessible site quite difficult.
Also, a good CMS should let you enforce rules on your site editors and authors like ensuring they provide alt text for images.
Most CMS are providing better and better tools for accessibility compliance but not all.....
Steve
On 14:01:34 1 March 2005 Ashley wrote:
>Hi Alex
>
>Unless I'm very much mistaken, it's not really question of
>looking for a CMS that meets the requirements of the
>disability act. All a CMS does is manage, store and
>display content - so in that sense it's a "dumb
>computer" which will only do what you instruct it to.
>You are the one responsible for accessibility compliance,
>not your CMS.
>
>It's how you choose to display / render the content to the
>screen, and the nature of the content itself, and the
>display code you use that make a site accessible or not.
>This has nothing to do with the CMS per se - you can use
>any CMS to display non-accessible or accessible content as
>you choose.
>
>So unless there's a CMS whose USP is to render text
>content only as images with no supporting content or
>information, with links stripped out, then I would say ALL
>CMSs are still open to you.
>
>As an example of how NOT to do it, take a look at
>Manchester United's entry page ((http://www.manutd.com)
>http://www.manutd.com). I'd be very surprised indeed if
>they're not using a CMS but that page is still quite
>outstandingly in-accessible, particuarly given their user
>base. All it consists of is 4 images with no text, no
>alt text, no long descriptions, no nothing. I'd be very
>unimpressed indeed as a Man United fan trying to browse
>that site with a screen reader. (they do provide an
>accessible version at (http://www.manutd.com/access)
>http://www.manutd.com/access but you'd have to get
>through the splash page first)
>
>Ashley
>
>On 12:21:26 1 March 2005 MrAlexKing wrote:
>
>Just looking at CMS for one of our new sites, and was
>wondering if anyone knows of any systems that meet
>the requirements of the disability act?!?!
>
>Many thanks
>
>Alex
Group Marketing Manager at ALB Accountancy Ltd
01 March 2005 20:17pm
Steve,
Thanks for the hints, due to the excellent article on E-consultancy about CMS, I have been looking at OpenCMS looks very feature rich and also extremely powerful.
We will review the options out there but I wanted to see if anyone had any experince with any "spot on" CMS systems with ref to the disability act.
Thanks
Alex
On 17:33:45 1 March 2005 Smorgan wrote:
>How much the implementation costs depends on your
>requirements, how closely the CMS matches them and what
>skills you have in-house - not on whether or not it's open
>source.
>
>I'm sure compliance with the disability act is one of
>several important requirements that need to be understood
>before a particular product can be recommended. However,
>in the open source space have a look at:
>
>Zope www.zope.org (python)
>Redhat CMS http://ccm.redhat.com/ (J2EE)
>Matrix http://matrix.squiz.net (PHP)
>Magnolia http://www.magnolia.info/en/community.html (J2EE)
>
>If you give me some more information about preferred
>technology platform, other requirements, etc I can narrow
>this down for you.
>
>Cheers,
>
>Steve
>
>
>MrAlexKing
>
>On 13:52:52 1 March 2005 Lunchtime wrote:
>>I don't want to dishearten you alex; in an ideal world
>>open source can be a designers paradise but can break
>the
>>bank in implimentation. I keep raving about
>>contensis because the implimentation time is minimal,
>and
>>they provide full technical support at every stage.
>the
>>cost to service ratio has benefited our business,
>>intergrating old text and systems, from the off set.
>>
>>On 13:38:30 1 March 2005 MrAlexKing wrote:
>>
>>Thanks for for the reply but I was thinking along the
>>lines of open source. Any ideas?
>>
>>On 13:27:35 1 March 2005 Lunchtime wrote:
>>
>>hey alex I have heard of Contensis.co.uk apprently
>they
>>comply with the CMS Disability act. and have one of
>the
>>best CMS solutions out there, second hand from my
>boss,
>>hope this helps
Chief Information Architect at Extrasys Ltd
02 March 2005 11:50am
Hi Alex,
At Surfability we've developed our own 'spot on' CMS for our clients with a WYSIWIG that produces accessible XHTML that is DDA compliant. We use a lot of open source software but we couldn't find a CMS that could do everything we wanted it to. Once our product is commoditised we may package it up for sourceforge but for now it takes a bit of tailoring for specific websites.
Of all the open source CMS's out there, we've found Plone to be the best but we much prefer our own system.
Cheers,
Mark
Technical Director at Box UK
04 March 2005 19:42pm
Remember that code alone does not make you 'DDA Compliant' (not that there is such a thing, yet).
As Ashley pointed out, the vast majority of CMS systems will allow you to produce accessible code, depending on how you implement templates, etc. - as most CMS systems are XML based, XHTML (and semantic markup) are pretty common.
Apart from producing accessible/semantic code, you of course also have to worry about accessible content (not many CMS systems can help you with this - (small plug - ours produces readability analysis!)), and offer functionality that allows accessible browsing.
For example, the WAI WCAG 1 guidelines (which most people agree the DDA will use as their base level of compliance) argue that you should 'provide content in the way in which the user needs it' (or words to that effect) - so you could argue that a system that supports multiple lanaguages and output channels increases accessibility. The WCAG also hints at other pieces of required functionality, such as different levels of searching (to suit different needs of users), so a CMS that supports simple keyword to advanced/wizard searches is also a consideration...
It all depends on how you interpret the WCAG (as the DDA doesn't really make that many specific requirements)...