CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

We (Chicago Technology Cooperative) are creating a site that will be utilized by screen readers, and so the mark-up (HTML) has to be semantic and accessible.

Some accessibility problems with the default templates in CiviCRM (Overall, mark-up is mostly semantically correct.):

• Little things, like correct semantic use of tags
• Table for layouts
• Headings
• Flow of information
• Access keys (some there now)

Some other things to address:

• A layer to abstract common elements like forms.
• Inline JS (not a huge accessibility problem, but abstracting this out would be very beneficial for templating).
• Overall better templating system.  Maintaining/changing/reviewing all these template files is very unweildy.

Major goals of this project:

• Accessibility
• Enhancing/Abstracting CiviCRM Templating

I have coined my new template CiviAccess.  Currently, I am working on changing the HTML to be more semantic/accessible.  I am also trying to abstract things like form creation and tables into Smarty plugins (functions, blocks).  I am also marking the beginning and ending of every template file with HTML comments so that finding specific parts is easier (something the current template only does on a macro level).

I am definitely looking to give this back to the community because it's a good step and it will be easier to maintain for everyone.  I am hoping that people have ideas or possible similar experiences.  Please also note that this post is not about pointing fingers or finding faults, except in regards of making CiviCRM better, specifically for users that have accessibility issues.

Some suggestions for core so far:

• Ability to define another directory for smarty plugins, like template files.  This way we do not have to add files to core.
• Also the ability to override the existing Smarty plugins.  If more things like forms were abstracted then it would be important for people to be able to theme them.