Designing Drupal Content Authoring Experiences to Encourage Accessible Content

Overview

Many accessibility failures on Drupal sites happen during content authoring. From a skipped heading level to bolded text standing in for an <h2> to alt text copy-pasted into the caption.

Developers inherit these problems after an accessibility audit. Meanwhile, the people entering content are asked to be accessible without knowing how, on top of everything else already on their plates.

In this training, we move the work upstream, into the content authoring experience. Developers will learn how to choose field types and craft help text that empowers content authors to be accessible as they work, rather than hoping they'll go back to a style guide or a recorded Drupal training.

We'll practice on your own content types, looking at where to add structure with more fields and where to leave flexibility, which heading levels and formatting should exist in the editor, and content moderation as an accessibility gate. We'll also touch on AI — finding trends in your accessibility audit results, drafting alt-text, and handling the formatting that arrives when editors paste in AI content. Bring a sticky content type and a cross-functional colleague you build content models with.

Who it's for

Developers, content designers, content strategists, and website managers who work on websites with many content editors. This training is especially relevant to higher ed, state and local government, healthcare, and nonprofit teams who are working to serve the public with great user experiences and comply with accessibility regulations.

Learning outcomes

By the end, participants will:
・Understand who is putting content into Drupal and what kind of support they need to be accessible
・Specify structured fields to replace free-form WYSIWYG regions, and articulate the accessibility case to a stakeholder
・Write field help text that supports authors and doesn’t restate field labels
・Decide which styling and formatting features belong in the editor (hint: it usually isn’t accordions and <h1> headings)  
・Define a content moderation workflow that includes an accessibility review
・Build Drupal training that includes guidance on heading structure, page titles, alt text vs. captions, and special formatting 

Please note: This is a paid training session that requires an additional registration fee, which you can add when completing your main event registration. Register now!