Changes to External Accessibility Resources
This document explains the redraft of External Accessibility Resources. The revision replaces a flat collection of links with a maintained hierarchy of standards, evaluation guidance, tools, practical guidance, policy sources, assistive-technology documentation, community support, and emerging work.
Summary
The revised page uses ideas from TRUSTED_SOURCES.yaml without reproducing its machine-readable schema. Readers are asked to consider a source’s authority, intended use, status, ownership, review date, and jurisdiction. Each retained resource now has a short statement of purpose.
The revision:
- Places current W3C standards and official supporting material first.
- Separates normative standards from informative techniques, examples, checklists, and product documentation.
- Explains that automated rules test limited conditions and cannot determine accessibility or conformance.
- Retains a short, varied set of testing tools while pointing readers to W3C’s maintained tool directory.
- Adds established government guidance from Canada, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
- Adds official assistive-technology documentation instead of relying on third-party tutorials.
- Replaces outdated community links with current Drupal Slack and office-hours pages.
- Moves WCAG 3 and APCA into an explicitly non-normative emerging-work section.
Detailed changes
| Original area | Change | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Page introduction | Added selection criteria covering authority, intended use, status, ownership, review date, and jurisdiction. | A link can be useful without being authoritative. Readers need to know whether they are consulting a standard, implementation guide, legal source, community checklist, or product document. |
| WCAG 2.2 and 2.1 | Kept WCAG 2.2 and removed the separate WCAG 2.1 entry. Added Understanding WCAG 2.2 and WCAG 2.2 Techniques. | WCAG 2.2 includes the requirements from WCAG 2.0 and 2.1, apart from the obsolete Parsing criterion. Separate older-version links add clutter. The supporting documents help readers interpret and implement the current Recommendation. |
| ATAG 2.0 | Retained ATAG and explained why it matters to Drupal. | Drupal is an authoring tool. Its editing interfaces and the content they produce are both relevant. |
| ARIA Authoring Practices Guide | Retained the guide with a warning to test patterns in their implementation context. | APG examples are useful implementation references, but copying an example does not establish WCAG conformance. |
| General checklist | Retained The A11Y Project checklist but labelled it as a community checklist. | A checklist is useful for orientation. WCAG remains the source for conformance requirements. |
| Courses list | Removed the GitHub accessibility-courses collection. | The page should direct readers to maintained standards, implementation guidance, and testing resources. A broad course directory adds maintenance work without supporting a specific Drupal task. |
| 18F accessibility guide | Replaced the old 18F guide link with current U.S. Web Design System accessibility guidance. | The replacement is actively maintained, official United States government guidance with component, process, and testing material. |
| GDS accessibility blog | Replaced the blog-only reference with the DWP Accessibility Manual. | The manual provides a structured, maintained source for roles, testing, law, and delivery practices. A blog remains useful for news but is not the strongest general reference. |
| International guidance | Added the Government of Canada Digital Accessibility Toolkit and AccessibleEU. | The original list was weighted toward United States and United Kingdom sources. Drupal is an international project. |
| Law and policy | Added a distinct section with the W3C laws and policies index, Section508.gov, and Accessibility Standards Canada. | Legal and policy sources are jurisdiction-specific and should not be mixed with technical standards. The page now warns readers to confirm applicable requirements. |
| Community resources | Kept current Drupal Slack and office-hours links. Removed the W3C Slack link, legacy Drupal Groups searches, the meetup YouTube channel, and the Twitter people list. | The retained links provide current Drupal contribution routes. Search pages, platform-specific social lists, and loosely maintained directories decay quickly. |
| Accessibility tools | Added W3C guidance for selecting tools and its maintained tools directory. Retained a smaller cross-section of automated, guided, visual, command-line, and development-tool options. | The original product list gave no selection criteria or limits. The revised text states what each tool is for and directs readers to a maintained directory for broader comparison. |
| Tool results | Added the distinction between accessibility barriers, requirements, test rules, and conformance decisions. | Tools test a subset of conditions. Even fewer rules are deterministic enough for unattended build gates. Manual review is still required. |
| Simulators | Removed Funkify and the color-blindness simulator section. | Simulators do not reproduce disabled people’s experiences and can create false confidence. Disabled-user testing and appropriate technical checks provide better evidence. |
| Color contrast tools | Removed the isolated contrast-checker list. Contrast tools can be found through the W3C tools directory and the selected general evaluation tools. | A short list of calculators becomes stale and can imply that contrast alone determines visual accessibility. |
| APCA | Changed “New WCAG 3.0 Color Model APCA” to an emerging-research entry with an explicit limitation. | APCA is not WCAG 3 and WCAG 3 remains an early draft. Neither replaces Drupal’s current WCAG 2.x contrast requirements. |
| Screen readers | Replaced third-party overview links and the ChromeVox extension with official documentation for NVDA, VoiceOver, TalkBack, and JAWS. | Official product documentation is more likely to remain current. The selection covers major desktop and mobile platforms, free and commercial products, and an open-source screen reader. |
| Assistive-technology scope | Added guidance to choose combinations based on users, supported platforms, and risk. | Testing every possible combination is not practical. One result cannot be generalized to every browser, product, disability, or user. |
| Media guidance | Added W3C guidance for accessible audio and video. | Media requirements depend on whether content is live, prerecorded, audio-only, video-only, or synchronized. A dedicated authoritative source is more reliable than isolated tool links. |
Content removed or consolidated
- Duplicate WCAG versions: Consolidated under WCAG 2.2 because it contains the applicable WCAG 2.0 and 2.1 requirements.
- Accessibility course directory: Removed because it did not support a defined task and would require separate curation.
- Twitter people and company list: Removed because the platform reference and list are stale.
- Legacy Drupal Groups and meetup links: Replaced by active Drupal Slack and office-hours routes.
- Simulators: Removed because they are not substitutes for evaluation with disabled people.
- Standalone contrast-tool list: Consolidated under the maintained W3C evaluation-tools directory.
- ChromeVox extension: Removed from the recommended screen-reader set in favour of maintained product documentation for more widely used desktop and mobile screen readers.
- Fixed claims that tools “support Web Components”: Removed because support varies by tool, rule, browser, component implementation, and shadow DOM configuration.
Claims not added
The revision does not claim that:
- Inclusion on the page is a Drupal endorsement.
- A practical guide, checklist, technique, or APG example is a normative requirement.
- An automated scan establishes accessibility or WCAG conformance.
- Every automated rule is reliable enough to block a build.
- A simulator reproduces a disabled person’s experience.
- One assistive-technology result applies to every product or user.
- WCAG 3 or APCA replaces current WCAG 2.2 requirements.
- General policy links constitute legal advice.
Sources checked
TRUSTED_SOURCES.yaml- W3C Accessibility Standards Overview
- Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2
- Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG) 2.0
- ARIA Authoring Practices Guide
- Selecting Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools
- Involving Users in Evaluating Web Accessibility
- WCAG Evaluation Methodology
- WCAG 3 Introduction
- DWP Accessibility Manual
- U.S. Web Design System accessibility guidance
- Government of Canada Digital Accessibility Toolkit
- AccessibleEU