Web accessibility means that people with disabilities can use the Web. More specifically, Web accessibility means that people with disabilities can perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the Web, and that they can contribute to the Web. Web accessibility also benefits others, including older people with changing abilities due to aging.
Source: W3C
No, SharePoint (WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007) is not standards compliant for accessibility "out of the box".
Common mistakes
Always define the level of accessibility required. This may come from a Government ruling that they have to abide by or a Company level corporate charter.
Tools to help with SharePoint Accessibility
There are a few projects in the community that are running to help achieve accessible sites:
Accessibility Kit for SharePoint (AKS)
The Accessibility Kit for SharePoint® (AKS) solution will help get you started on the road to Web accessibility with an accessible platform and framework from which to launch your portal or intranet site. Microsoft in collaboration with HiSoftware developed and support the Accessibility Kit for SharePoint® (AKS) along with a partner and customer community.
They have a listserve you can subscribe to to keep up to date with their latest developments.
ARF is a FREE development framework for SharePoint, both MOSS and WSS. It provides a consistent solution to common problems found in SharePoint publishing development.
ARF is also complete open source, allowing you to download and modify it to suit your own needs. Each release of ARF includes the full source to the ARF projects.
Vincent Rothwell (aka thekid) is involved in this project and has a great blog which documents how he's using ARF.
Our Accessibility Framework has been in continual incremental development over the last five years. Based initially on Content Management Server 2002 and more recently on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, updates were made periodically according to changes in standards and other developments in web technology.
Using the Accessibility Framework, Content and Code launched the first accessible website in SharePoint for Fifteen, a restaurant founded by Jamie Oliver.
"Accessibility is mandatory for many organisations, allowing access to the web for all. Our SharePoint 2007 Accessibility Framework allows sites to be built rapidly without sacrificing SharePoint functionality."
The [unofficial] Accessibility Kit for SharePoint (uAKS) aims to make SharePoint more accessible by striving to achieve WCAG and US Section 508 compliance. This project is an unofficial fork of the HiSoftware Accessibility Kit for SharePoint (AKS).
NOTE: This project is an unofficial fork of official, original version made by HiSowftware. We are neither affiliated with nor make claims to its version of AKS or other software or service offerings.
Another useful addition to your list would be BKS (Barrierefrei-kit für Sharepoi...
Another useful addition to your list would be BKS (Barrierefrei-kit für Sharepoint) which is an accessibility kit for sharepoint. It can be found here: http://bks.codeplex.com/
It is worth mentioning the [RNIB website] (Royal National Institute...
It is worth mentioning the [RNIB website] (Royal National Institute for the Blind).
It's a WCAG 2.0 AAA website built in SharePoint by [Content and Code]. The main boon is that it provides accessible editing and administration as well as rendering (a world first as far as I'm aware).
Although there doesn't seem to be a community release of this yet, but there is mention on their website of a reusable framework called SAS (SharePoint Accessibility Solution) which has a very impressive feature set:
Comments (2)
Sep 30, 2009
Anonymous says:
Another useful addition to your list would be BKS (Barrierefrei-kit für Sharepoi...Another useful addition to your list would be BKS (Barrierefrei-kit für Sharepoint) which is an accessibility kit for sharepoint. It can be found here: http://bks.codeplex.com/
Oct 01, 2009
Anonymous says:
It is worth mentioning the [RNIB website] (Royal National Institute...It is worth mentioning the [RNIB website] (Royal National Institute for the Blind).
It's a WCAG 2.0 AAA website built in SharePoint by [Content and Code]. The main boon is that it provides accessible editing and administration as well as rendering (a world first as far as I'm aware).
Although there doesn't seem to be a community release of this yet, but there is mention on their website of a reusable framework called SAS (SharePoint Accessibility Solution) which has a very impressive feature set:
http://www.contentandcode.com/solutions/Pages/accessibility.aspx