How to work around Share point accessibility requirement ?

Question

 

Hi,

I am somewhat new to things related to accessibility in SharePoint. I am trying to work on section 508 accessibility requirements for SharePoint site. I have tried to see few articles from the internet and still looking for more information on the subject matter including what to consider fro preparing requirement.  

I am looking to know what is possible and what is not with SharePoint?

How to achieve all the possible accessibilities in SharePoint?

Is it possible to make accessible all site types (Publishing, team sites,…)?

Please help me in understanding everything around SharePoint accessibility and first in preparing the requirement document. I have tried to see AKS site but there were some issues that are not clear for me at this level.

Thank you in advance,

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ephi

Answer 1

Hi there, a good way to start of is to read MS VPATs, who in detail describes what are compilant and in witch levels and sections.

 http://www.microsoft.com/Industry/government/products/section508.mspx

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Chris

Answer 2

EPhi,

the acessibility in Sharepoint CAN be achieved using some help, there are nowadays some frameworks to help us:

AKS - Acessibility Kit for Sharepoint (this one you already know)
SPWorks (ARF) - Alternative Rendering Framework for Sharepoint (http://www.spworks.co.uk/downloads/latest.aspx)

You can apply your own development technices, I have written  a 2 part article on this:

http://techtalkpt.wordpress.com/2008/06/18/building-accessible-sharepoint-sites-part-1/
http://techtalkpt.wordpress.com/2008/08/07/building-accessible-sharepoint-sites-part-2/

As far as I can tell the best solution up to now is the ARF from SPWorks, but there are much more information on achieving W3C complaince to Sharepoint.

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Ricardo Magalhães

Answer 3

You can now try out the new version of AKS 2.0!!!

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Ricardo Magalhães

Answer 4

We (Content and Code) are soon to be  launching a framework called SAS (SharePoint Accessibility Solution) which was used to develop the RNIB website (launched Wed 16th Sept 2009).

It is a set of SharePoint solutions packages (WSPs) which can be installed into a SharePoint farm and replace the rendering and display of key SharePoint functionality to make it WCAG 2.0 AAA accessible and valid XHTML markup.

This effectively provides:
* Accessible "menu" structures (Site Actions, Publishing Consoles, Toolbars)
* Search results and search controls
* Replacement navigation controls (Global Nav, Quick Launch, Breadcrumb and logo controls)
* Accessible administration screens (basic Site Settings, basic List Settings, Permissions, navigation editing, feature activation)
* Accessibly rendered List Views, toolbars, file uploads and list item editing
* Accessible content approval, publishing, page settings, recycle bins and "view site content".

There is also much more..

I don't know about the "section 508" but all of our work is WCAG 2.0 compliant (AAA) and has passed the RNIB "SurfRight" guidelines, and has been fully audited by their team.

In terms of additional work (over and above the "framework"):

For publishing sites there is always some rework that is needed, such as creating Master Pages, CSS and Page Layouts to make sure that the pages also render accessibly.

If you are building collaboration sites (such as Team Sites, Meeting Workspaces) then you would also need to build custom Site Definitions so that you can easily replace the ASPX pages that get deployed when sites are provisioned.

Let me know if you want more information. Until our official material is published on our website I'm more than happy to answer any questions you have about this?

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regards
Martin Hatch
MCPD .Net Web Development
MCTS WSS 3.0 | MOSS 2007
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