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DNN Blog
Jun
21
Posted by:
cathal connolly
6/21/2006 4:00 AM
Back in the early days of DotNetNuke (1.08 from memory), a community member came forward with the series of changes needed to make DotNetNuke ADA-508 compliant. These were merged into the codebase and for a couple of releases the core was fully compliant. Maintaining core compliance wasn't too difficult, as in those days the ability to change look and feel was relatively limited (you had to hack the files directly in most cases)
With version 2.0 and the introduction of the rich skinning architecture, this compliance slipped a little. Over time as the modules became more powerful, and the portal more complex, we became less compliant with common accessibility standards. Whilst it was possible for skin designers and developers to create and release compliant sites (e.g. this and this describe 2 recent efforts), DotNetNuke didn't necessarily make it as easy as we would like. As a portal framework our aim is always to provide you with as much rich functionality as we can out of the box, but not to impact your efforts to create websites and applications exactly as you intended.
This is an area we've been wanting to revisit, and recently I've been scoping out requirements for this, prior to it being added as an official roadmap item. Due to the degree of interest, I thought it best to blog briefly about it whilst the scope is finalised. I've done this in a series of Q&A points that hopefully address the main queries.
Q. Are you going to create a version of DotNetNuke that is ADA/WCAG/XHTML compliant?
A. Frequently accessibility standards, xhtml and css based skins are all lumped together as the same thing, but whilst theres a large degree of cross-over, they're not an exact match e.g. you can have a site that passes common accessibility criteria without being xhtml compliant. The key deliverable for this roadmap item is to try and ensure that out of the box DotNetNuke can pass common accessibility standards such as W3C WAI Level A, and ADA 508 (as this either is, or soon will be a legal requirement in many countries or for particular sites e.g. Government/Council sites). During this work, where possible efforts will be made to alter markup to be xhtml compliant, but Accessibility compliance will have priority.
Q. Will upgrading to this new version make my site look different?
A. No. One of the aims is to make this a non-breaking change with regards look and feel. In cases where we need to alter hardcoded values, we will add enhancements that default to the current values but allow the value to be overriden i.e. DotNetNuke has a fixed DOCTYPE on default.aspx. Altering this would effect look and feel, so we will add an enhancement to allow skin DOCTYPE to be altered e.g. through a skin level setting either on the ascx or in the skin.xml
Q. Will these changes be for both 3.x and 4.x.
A. Ideally yes. Sadly, asp.net 1.1 emitts invalid markup in many cases, making it much more difficult to create compliant sites (whereas asp.net 2.0 can emit xhtml), but we will try to update both code bases equally.
Q. What release are we likely to start seeing changes in?
A. They've already started in some cases e.g in 4.3 some of the uppercase HEAD and LINK tags were changed to using the asp.net 2.0 control equivalents (which emit valid html). There are a number of projects that will help with the efforts including the new menu provider that's xhtml compliant, as well as an official release of the xhtml compatible FCKeditor provider. The next release of DotNetNuke will be a stability release, expect to see most of the changes in a release after that.
Q. Will you be fixing the core modules too?
A. The modules are the responsibility of their own project teams, but we'll certainly be offering suggestions/advice/code fixes and encouraging them to incorporate them.
Q. Do you have a list of items potentially in scope?
A. The full scope hasn't been defined yet, but you can expect to see some of the following
- Utilising some of the accessibility support in asp.net
- adopting some of the recommendations from the MS guidelines
- removing any barriers for entry (e.g. hardcoded non-compliant html or replacing linkbuttons where possible with non-postback methods)
- addition of access keys at the page level and a way to easily expose a list of these to screen readers (e.g. via an ACCESSKEYS skinobject)
13 comment(s) so far...
Re: Accessibility standards & xhtml compliance
Thanks for posting this Cathal - I have created some skins using the new menu provided by Jon Henning - and will be testing them - The new menu offers some nice features to it for the aspnet 2 environment, including creating horizontal menus without tables.
So I hope that people realise that it's a step by step process with DotNetNuke and I'm looking forward to working with you on this area.
Nina Meiers
By nina on
6/21/2006 3:32 AM
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Re: Accessibility standards & xhtml compliance
I am so glad that we are moving in this direction, other open source CMS's such as Joomla are already there, this will enable DNN to compete on a level playing field.
And of course, we will all be able to enjoy the (dreaded) using tables for layout debate once again.
Tim O'Brien -
http://www.obrienit.se
By Isomies on
6/21/2006 6:26 AM
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Re: Accessibility standards & xhtml compliance
NICE! Cathal this is a great example of the kind of proactive, forward-looking communication the community needs from the Core Team! Most of us have little if any doubt about how forward-thinking the team usually is....but too often that's not shared with the rest of us with the openness and clarity you've shown. Again, thanks!
And thanks also for putting such effort into an area few may actually see the volume of changes in/benefit from, truly magnanimous.
By RLyda on
6/21/2006 3:34 PM
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Re: Accessibility standards & xhtml compliance
I agree, this will be a big help for mass DNN acceptance. Thanks for the info.
By AerosSaga on
6/22/2006 1:11 PM
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Re: Accessibility standards & xhtml compliance
Great news to read! I'm sort of a mambo convert and the design side is where I've always struggled with here in DNN. Your points about accessibility are perfect - since most people get lost in the reasons for standards besides simply to be browser agnostic. I hope this gets votes and moves forward.
Cheers
By wedwardbeck on
6/24/2006 8:00 PM
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Re: Accessibility standards & xhtml compliance
I just found this blog from a thread link. I also checked out your numerous completed issues regarding this in gemini.
I totally cannot afford it but I just joined dnn as a bronze benefactor soley because of your efforts in this area.
I work in a small government department and already use dnn on our intranet. I aslo own a small business and use it there. These enhancements would enable me to launch dnn for our government website also.
I've already presented dnn to our tech review comittee and it passed. I haven't even approached the accesibility group with it yet though.
I've even already hooked our departmental Access database into 4.3.3 of dnn so our entry level clerical folks are feeding content to a staged dnn installation and don't even realize it.
A much larger, sister department is launching a comprable project for over $300k/year in licensing fees. I beat all of their features and time to 'market' with Access and DNN. I just need the accessibility features and we'll be saving our constiuents a huge sum of cash.
I figured that my vote for these features and encouragement for them to take a few steps up the priority ladder would more effective with a show of financial support.
I couldn't find a way to get you some cash on your website, and I couldn't find a way to make a one-time < $100 donation on the dnn site, so I've Bronzed myself.
It's also too bad that I couldn't submit a comment with my subscription so that I could credit your efforts.
I'm hoping that these features, once implemented, will also be part of the new Review Program so 3rd party modules could be used by us gov. folks with confidence.
Thanks again Cathal. Government clients may not be a huge segment of dnn's base, but I'll wager it will grow with your efforts.
By phabyn on
7/25/2006 4:56 PM
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Re: Accessibility standards & xhtml compliance
Thanks very much for the information. Looking forward for all the accessibility improvements.
By arifshah on
9/7/2006 8:21 PM
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Re: Accessibility standards & xhtml compliance
This is essential and hopefully will be achieved and remain as showstopper benchmark material for future development whenever possible.
As well, just as core modules must utilize core DNN framework features, it should be expected that each of them also adopt this same approach to accessibility. To have the core framework accessible but not key core modules as well defeats the purpose. Third party developers will follow suit when the path is clear and the demand is clear.
Accessibility has remained an issue regarding DNN on our state university site, and has required lots of extra effort. Additionally, a new prospective client looks for accessibility as a primary requirement on a site for persons with disabilities. The suggested direction gives me more hope that I can be confident that DNN will indeed work for them.
Thanks,
Michael
By pmichael on
10/29/2006 10:44 PM
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Re: Accessibility standards & xhtml compliance
I am delighted to read this blog. I'm currently working for an advocacy org for the disabled. We are looking for a suitable content management system. Could the author please post an update on the status of this compliance initiative. I see that all issues in Gemini are completed. Does this mean all work on DNN accessibility is in the latest version 4.3.5?
Thanks much!
By plord on
11/14/2006 1:31 AM
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Re: Accessibility standards & xhtml compliance
No, I'm afraid not. We recently upgraded the issuelog software and it seems to have incorrectly updated some issue's status. I've reset them correctly. The next release (3.3.6/4.3.6) is a stabilisation release, so does not yet contain the fixes. At present I have local copies of most of the changes made and tested, I plan to check them in for the next release (4.4)
By cathal on
11/14/2006 1:38 AM
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Re: Accessibility standards & xhtml compliance
Cathal you said that changing the modules is down to each team. What would be good is some kind of logo to show against modules that meet the accesability critieria i.e are compliant and also a logo against modules that are CSS only (or alternatively mark the ones that use table layout) It would make it easier to find modules for a site that wants to be acessable and/or avoid table layout. It would create a free market and allow for a process of natural selection provided there were a range of both CSS and Table layout modules.
By unipower on
12/22/2006 4:03 PM
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Re: Accessibility standards & xhtml compliance
Long term I expect that as we extend out the certification program for the DotNetNuke marketplace, we will start to publically score our own projects via the same criteria, hopefully that will allow you to source your modules. I also expect that once the wiki project is released and we start to allow more dynamic documentation, the community will help identify components.
By cathal on
12/22/2006 4:08 PM
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Re: Accessibility standards & xhtml compliance
If the core DNN team through the default modules and skins adopt the idea of a 'Compliance Logo' for accessibility, this will start the trend by raising the profile of this critical functionality and the quality acceptance expected of 3rd party modules / skins by corporate users.
By unitech on
4/12/2007 10:52 AM
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