Going blindly about it

By: François

Web site accessibility is fortunately a more and more commonly discussed topic and TYPO3 is rather well-positioned for delivering accessible content. But what about the backend?

Since about a month I am collaborating at a client's with a blind person. He's not just supposed to test if the web site we are producing is accessible for him or up to some or all of the standards and recommendations that exist. He is a developer and we are trying to figure out how we can integrate him into the project team.

After having explained the basic concepts of TYPO3 I moved on to present him the backend. This proved to be quite a challenge. A blind person uses a screen reader when working on a computer. This software reads out not only the text but also all the available menu commands. In a web page the screen reader will draw up a list of all the links. The equivalent of clicking on a link is achieved by scrolling up and down the link list with the arrow keys and pressing "Return" when on the right one.

Now try to imagine how the TYPO3 backend comes out with such a program. It contains tens of links if not hundreds, plus drop-down menus with several options and buttons launching AJAX commands (not many in 4.1, but many more in upcoming 4.2). All these links may seem quite logically arranged when one can see, but this is far from obvious when all those links are just being read aloud to you. Anyway the sheer quantity of them is daunting.

The challenges are manyfold:

• The first issue is that it takes a lot of time for the screen reader to read all the links.
• Second it implies an enormous memory effort to remember all the links that were read out.
• Last but not least many links are not differentiated. Most or all links that fill the same function (e.g. create a new record) bear the same title attribute. Without visual feedback how do you diffentiate which link does what?
• One more hurdle: the backend uses frames. The screen reader reads only the frame which has the focus. To access links inside another frame, you must first switch frames, then choose a link.

The conclusion we have reached for the moment is that the TYPO3 backend is not accessible at all, respect of accessibility standards notwithstanding. It contains simply way too much information that is impossible to process without the ability to see. The new backend of 4.2 will be no help. It contains just about as many links as the old one and more AJAX calls which are often badly handled by screen readers.

We don't know yet how we will be able to integrate this person into the project. The obvious solution would be to develop a backend that is adapted to his needs but there is neither time nor resources available for such an undertaking. We are definitely going blindly about this...