Drupal Association blog: Top Drupal accessibility modules for enhancing digital inclusivity

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Uplifting the digital experience of your Drupal website by making it accessible is inevitable.

The reason behind digital evolution is its easy availability for all. But unfortunately, the web is still full of inaccessible experiences, which become a hindrance for users with any sort of disability. And that is the reason why Drupal incorporated various accessibility features with time to ensure its website accessibility.

Along with accessibility features, Drupal has accessibility modules as well that are contributed by its active community. The modules improve Drupal website accessibility without having to put much effort into coding.

Let’s know which are those modules that enhance Drupal website accessibility.

Top Drupal web accessibility modules!

#1 All in One Accessibility

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Drupal All in One Accessibility is an AI based accessibility module to enable Drupal websites to be accessible among people with hearing or vision impairments, motor impaired, color blind, dyslexia, cognitive & learning impairments, seizure and epileptic, and ADHD problems. It manages website UI and design related alteration as an accessibility interface.

Drupal All in One Accessibility module installs in just 2 minutes. PRO version reduces the risk of time-consuming accessibility lawsuits.

This module improves accessibility compliance for the standards WCAG 2.0, WCAG 2.1, WCAG 2.2, ADA, Section 508, European EAA EN 301 549, Canada ACA, California Unruh, Israeli Standard 5568, Australian DDA, UK Equality Act, Ontario AODA, France RGAA, German BITV, Brazilian Inclusion law LBI 13.146/2015, Spain UNE 139803:2012, JIS X 8341, Italian Stanca Act, and Switzerland DDA.

It is a cornerstone of improving web accessibility through its ease of use for companies of all sizes. Top features of the module:

  1. Accessibility statement
  2. Accessibility interface for UI design fixes
  3. Dashboard Automatic accessibility score
  4. AI based Image Alternative Text remediation
  5. AI based Text to Speech Screen Reader
  6. Keyboard navigation adjustments
  7. Content, Color, Contrast, and Orientation Adjustments
  8. Supports 53 languages
  9. PDF / Document Remediation Add-On
  10. White Label Subscription
  11. Live site translation add-on
  12. Custom widget color, position, icon size, and type
  13. Dedicated email support

#2 Monsido Tools

Monsido tool helps to optimize Drupal websites easily and swiftly. The tool ensures that the website is validated for the de facto international standard, which is WCAG 2.1. So that website will be accessible to everyone in each region.

Monsido scans your Drupal website to identify all persisting accessibility issues and gives you suggestions on addressing the issues to rectify them. It also finds SEO errors and helps you optimize every page of your website.

#3 Editoria11y Accessibility Checker

Editoria11y (editorial accessibility ally) is supported by Princeton University. It is made focusing on content quality and accessibility.

The module checks content automatically, authors are not required to get trained to use it. It detects issues that appear after Drupal assembles the pages by testing rendered content.

Editoria11y prioritizes content issues by inserting alerts and tooltips to help authors fix the problems without troubling them with complex code. It majorly supplements the accessibility issues and does not replace the elements.

#4 Civic Accessibility Toolbar

The Civic Accessibility Toolbar has a block with accessibility utilities which is an aid for end-users if they wish to switch between theme versions with higher color contrast and update text font sizes as well.

The module enables its users to create a block with both or at least one of the utilities to make your Drupal website accessible for visually impaired users. It is tested with Garland, Bartik, Zen Starterkit, Stark, and Olivero themes.

It uses colourContrast and fontSize cookies to remember user selection. The cookies only use functional or necessary details and don’t keep the user’s personal information.

#5 Accessibility toolkit

Basically, Accessibility Toolkit helps Drupal developers with reusable tools so that they can fulfil the requirements of people with disabilities by making websites compatible with assistive technologies. It is tested for Drupal 7, 8, and 9. It does this through aggressive CSS additions and remembers the setting using Drupal's built-in usage of jQuery Cookie.

It provides a block with all little settings to allow for –

  • High contrast mode
  • Dyslexic font support
  • Text scaling
  • Inverted colors mode
  • Keyboard navigation (only for D8/D9)

#6 Fluidproject UI Options

The module is maintained by Ukrainian developers. It helps users to modify a web page’s line height, font size and style, contrast, and link style. All changes are retained using cookies for a longer span. Fluidproject UI options integrate Drupal libraries into non-admin pages.

To use this module, you need to have Grunt and NPM installed for compiling the infusion library, and a jQuery 1.7 version is required.

However, the module cannot do internationalization through the Drupal interface, JSON files within the module folder can perform this function. This Drupal accessibility module is tested with its most popular themes successfully. Please note here that some of its themes require additional CSS to adjust font size and line heights. Also, Contrast settings don’t work properly for website elements that use CSS gradients.

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE: PDF Document Accessibility Remediation

#7 High contrast

High contrast provides a quick solution for users to switch between an active theme and its high-contrast version.

It only needs to install it and press the tab from the keyboard, then click on the ‘Toggle high contrast’ link. You will find yourself in high contrast mode, returning to normal view is possible via following the same steps.

#8 Style Switcher

This Drupal website accessibility module enables every website visitor to select the stylesheet they want to view the site content with. They only require clicking on its link to get the new look of the website.

Style Switcher reduces the duplication of work since developers don’t need to create themes for alternative stylesheets. Themer has the capacity to provide a theme with alternate stylesheets and the Site builder can add alternate stylesheets in the admin section.

The module gathers and presents all the styles as a list of links in a block for site visitors. Thus, all visitors can easily choose their preferred styles. And the module uses cookies, so, if a user returns to the site, they get the same chosen style.

#9 Text Resize

The text resize accessibility module offers a block to end-users that helps in changing the font size of text on Drupal websites. The block includes a button to increase or decrease the text size, which is an aid for visually impaired users. Text resize uses JavaScript with jQuery and jQuery Cookie to bring accessibility.

#10 Automatic Alternative Text

The Automatic Alternative Text accessibility module uses the Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services API or Alttext.ai to generate alternative texts for images if the alt text is missing.

The module provides algorithms to process images. It can be used to understand if the image has relevant content or not. It also has features like categorizing the content of images, describing the images in human-readable language, and estimating the dominant and accent colors of the image.

P.S. All above-mentioned modules have free and premium versions available. You can select the best suited version.

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE: Voluntary Product Assessment Template (VPAT)

Some more contributed modules to fine-tune the Drupal website’s accessibility!

  • CKEditor Abbreviation
  • HTML Purifier
  • Siteimprove
  • htmLawed
  • Block ARIA Landmark Roles

Read more for detail information.

Wrapping up

Having an accessible website is crucial and the need of an hour. All in One Accessibility is a quick and comprehensive solution with AI based features to improve your website accessibility compliance at next level. The cherry on top is its 2 minutes installation and 10 days free trial. Not limited to this, the dashboard add-ons and upgrades like PDF / document accessibility remediation, white label subscription, and live site translation helps in increasing digital accessibility.

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