20 September 2013, 21:17

Does Mahara have a stated policy on complying with accessibility legislation and staying up-to-date with changes in accessibility laws and guidelines?

In particular:

1. Does it meet W3C WCAG 2.0 AA (or better), and there a policy of staying up-to-date with WCAG?
2. Does it meet the accessibility requirements of section 20, section 29 and schedule 25 of the UK Equality Act 2010, and the Equality Act's statutory code of practice for services, public functions and associations?
3. Is there a policy of keeping accessibility of Mahara in line with changing UK and EU legislation?

Thanks,

  Nick

23 September 2013, 12:18

Hi Nick,

No, the Mahara project doesn't have a stated accessibility policy. I'm not aware of whether the software has been evaluated to determine if it meets any particular accessibility guideline. I would guess that most of Mahara meets typical accessibility guidelines, except for the Page Builder, which relies on fancy Javascript and drag-and-drop.

We're certainly not opposed to meeting accessibility guidelines, and we've got a few bugs filed about accessibility issues in the bug tracker. But we'd need someone to fund the development work and ongoing maintenance to keep Mahara up to any particular accessibility spec.

Cheers,

Aaron

23 September 2013, 20:58

Thanks, Aaron.

I wonder if there's mileage in having a policy that discrepancies from certain major guidelines (eg, W3C WCAG 2.0 level AA) 0or legislation (eg US Section 508 or UK Equality Act) will be added to the defect backlog.  That is, not commitment to fixing them within a certain timescale, but at least getting them on the list.

Nick

23 September 2013, 22:45

Hello Nick,

That would certainly be a great idea. If they are then all tagged "accessibility" for example, they can be searched on easily. If you have intimate knowledge of these standards or already know of things where Mahara doesn't comply, please let us know / file bugs so we can keep an eye out for fixing things.

It'll be good to keep this in mind esp. when re-work is being done so that things can be improved in that regard. And some things may even be very easy to fix.

We do have a whole bunch of fixes in the pipeline that won't make it into Mahara 1.8 though relating to make Mahara usable without Javascript.

Thank you

Kristina

24 September 2013, 0:39

I love open source :)  Is there a wiki page we could put this tentative policy onto?  Does this work?  https://wiki.mahara.org/index.php/Accessibility

I wouldn't say I'm intimate with the legislation, but I have some familiarirty with which poarts of the UK Equality Act apply (and the statutory duty it places on public sector organisations, which many Mahara sites will be), so am happy to chip in as I get more familiar with Mahara.

24 September 2013, 11:21

Hi Nick,

Sure, that works as a place to put Accessibility information. For specific things that need to get fixed, it's probably better to put them in our bug tracker: https://bugs.launchpad.net/mahara

Cheers,

Aaron

24 September 2013, 12:25

Thanks, Aaron.  I've added a link to the tracker to the policy page.

24 September 2013, 22:29

Hello Nick,

Thanks a bunch for starting the wiki page. This is a great start.

Cheers

Kristina