CMS for accessibility [LWN.net]

CMS for accessibility

Posted Nov 6, 2003 15:03 UTC (Thu) by sdoyon (subscriber, #4221)
Parent article: Will the real Linux Gazette please stand up?

> For example, we have had one person recently point out that he is vision impaired. Having everything in a database means text-to-speech, for example, could be added.

Anyone know what this is about?
I myself am blind. That part of the argument sounds pretty far fetched to me.
You do text-to-speech from generic accessibility tools, not from each website independently.
What does a CMS buy you? In fact, having a tar of the files to process offline is nice.

Or is there something I'm missing?
Just a side issue of course, but still...

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CMS for accessibility

Posted Nov 6, 2003 17:32 UTC (Thu) by AnswerGuy (subscriber, #1256) [Link]

He might be visually impaired but not blind. Perhaps the Drupal-driven site's fonts (small), wording, and nagivation are making it harder for him. Also the Drupal-driven site seems to require javascript to traverse some links or provide other functionality and many blind people still prefer to use lynx or other curses mode browsers.

Over the years I never heard a complaint that the old Linux Gazette was too "old-fashioned." To the contrary all the feedback I've ever seen has expressed a preference for its simplicity, its focus on content rather than "dynamic" features. The fact is that all the bells and whistles on the web have made it far less accessible. (One thing I appreciated about LWN's migration to Quixote is the degree to which they avoided such problems).

BTW: the lg.COM site should not be taken as a denigration on Drupal's features. Drupal seems to be capable and can be more visually appealing. DebianPlanet is a drupal-driven site. I haven't seen any Javascript problems those.