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The following is a guest post from Drupal Accessibility Working Group maintainer Mike Gifford.

The digital world is becoming increasingly regulated, and for good reason. New legislation like the European Accessibility Act (EAA) is setting a clear standard for digital inclusion, ensuring that everyone, regardless of ability, has equal access to digital products and services. For the Drupal community, this isn't a challenge, but an opportunity to showcase what we do best - building an open, accessible web for all.

In Europe, the push for digital accessibility has been a long-term effort, beginning with the Web Accessibility Directive (WAD) in 2016. The WAD set the stage by requiring public sector websites and mobile apps to be accessible. Building on this foundation, the EAA extends these requirements to a much broader range of private sector products and services, including e-commerce, banking, and e-books, and these requirements are in effect now.

The core of both directives is their alignment with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 Level AA, a set of internationally recognized standards developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). To provide a clear legal framework, the EU relies on the harmonized technical standard EN 301 549, which incorporates WCAG but also extends its scope to include hardware and other ICT products. For any organization operating within the EU, understanding this legislative landscape is no longer just a "nice to have" - it's now a legal imperative.

Drupal's Longstanding Commitment to Core Accessibility

Drupal has a deep, longstanding commitment to accessibility, viewing it as a core value. From the very beginning, the platform has been built to be accessible, with key features and functionality available out-of-the-box. The community's proactive approach ensures that new releases, like Drupal 10 and 11, adhere to the latest accessibility standards. This means that a standard Drupal install provides a powerful and inclusive foundation for any web project.

The foundation of web accessibility is built on four core principles, often abbreviated as POUR: Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust. Let's explore how Drupal's core features directly contribute to each of these principles.

1. Perceivable: Ensuring All Users Can Access Information

A website is perceivable when its content can be consumed by users regardless of their sensory abilities. Drupal helps meet this principle in several key ways:

• Semantic HTML5: Drupal's architecture is built on clean, semantic HTML5. It uses proper tags like <nav>, <header>, <main>, and <footer> to define the structure of the page, which is essential for screen readers to navigate and interpret content.
• Image Handling: Drupal's media system makes adding and managing descriptive alternative text (alt text) for images a fundamental and required part of the content creation process. By default, content authors are prompted to add this critical information, ensuring that users with visual impairments can understand the purpose and content of an image.
• Visual Contrast: The core front-end theme, Olivero, and the administrative theme, Claro, are meticulously designed to meet WCAG 2.1 AA color contrast requirements. This ensures that text is readable against its background, a crucial element for users with low vision or color blindness.

2. Operable: Enabling All Users to Interact

A website must be operable for users who can't use a mouse, relying instead on a keyboard or other assistive devices. Drupal's core is designed for full keyboard operability.

• Keyboard Navigation: All interactive elements, from dropdown menus to form fields, are fully accessible via keyboard. Clear, visible focus states make it easy for keyboard-only users to see exactly where they are on the page.
• Skip Navigation: Drupal's core themes include a "skip to main content" link that is a required feature for WCAG. This link allows keyboard users to bypass repetitive navigation links at the top of a page and jump directly to the main content, saving time and effort.
• Developer helpers: JavaScript helpers are provided in Drupal core, allowing developers to easily add accessibility features to their sites like ARIA live regions or tabbing constraint to their modules and themes.

3. Understandable: Creating Clear and Predictable Interfaces

For a website to be understandable, both its content and its user interface must be clear and predictable.

• Logical Structure: Drupal's use of semantic HTML also creates a logical heading structure (H1, H2, H3, etc.). This hierarchy is vital for screen reader users and helps all users quickly grasp the organization of the content.
• Inline Form Errors: The core Inline Form Errors module, while not enabled by default, is a powerful tool for this. It provides immediate, context-sensitive feedback on form errors right next to the field, rather than a generic message at the top of the page. This is far more helpful and less confusing for all users.
• Clear Labels: Drupal's Form API ensures that form fields have correctly associated, descriptive labels, making them understandable for screen reader users.

4. Robust: Functioning Across Technologies

A robust website can be reliably interpreted by a wide range of user agents, including older browsers and assistive technologies. Drupal achieves this by adhering to web standards and providing full support for WAI-ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications), a set of attributes that add semantic information to elements to make dynamic content and custom widgets more accessible. This allows for rich, interactive experiences that still work for users who rely on assistive technologies.

The Role of AI in a More Accessible Future

The Drupal community is actively exploring how artificial intelligence can help streamline and automate accessibility tasks. This isn't about outsourcing responsibility, but rather empowering content authors and site administrators with smarter tools that make it easier to create and maintain an accessible web.

One of the most promising areas is the use of AI to generate high-quality alt text. While human review remains essential for context, AI-powered modules can significantly reduce the manual effort required for this critical task, particularly for sites with large image libraries.

• AI Image Alt Text: Modules like this one leverage machine learning vision models to automatically generate descriptive alt text for images. They provide a human-in-the-loop workflow, allowing content creators to review and edit the suggested text before publishing. This not only improves efficiency but also helps maintain consistency across large libraries of images.
• Limitations and Human Responsibility: It's important to understand that AI is a tool, not a solution. AI might describe an image as "A person standing on a stage," but a human content author can provide the context: "Drupal founder Dries Buytaert giving a keynote at DrupalCon." The human provides the meaning, which is the ultimate goal of accessibility.

Community-Driven Best Practices and Contributed Tools

Beyond core and AI, the Drupal ecosystem offers a wealth of resources and contributed modules that further enhance accessibility. This collaborative environment is key to keeping Drupal at the forefront of digital inclusion.

Some Accessibility-Focused Modules

• Alt Text Validation: Scans and validates image alt text site-wide and on save, with customizable rules that can warn or prevent saving.
• Block ARIA Landmark Roles: Adds ARIA landmark role assignment to block configuration forms.
• Editoria11y Accessibility Checker: An automatic, inline checker that helps authors create accessible content by marking issues, offering fixes, and tracking progress.
• Node Link Report: Scans and reports on link status (broken, redirected, good) and accessibility errors (indiscernible text, missing alt/aria-labels).

Also see this list from Smart Bees or on this article on OpenSource.com

The Power of a Community Initiative

The Drupal community's accessibility team works tirelessly to ensure core code is accessible. They have established a "needs accessibility review" process in the issue queue, inviting specialists to review patches and new features before they are committed to core. This rigorous process is a testament to the community's commitment to making accessibility a fundamental part of Drupal's DNA. They also hold regular Accessibility Office Hours to help new and experienced contributors alike.

The Role of the Site Builder and Content Author

Ultimately, technology is only part of the solution. A fully accessible website requires a commitment from the humans building and managing it.

• Start with an Accessible Foundation: Use Drupal's core and themes like Olivero to ensure your site is built on a solid, compliant base.
• Empower Content Authors: Train content creators on the importance of semantic headings, clear links, and providing meaningful alt text. Tools like Editoria11y can be invaluable in this process.
• Test, Test, Test: Don't rely solely on automated tools. Manual testing using a keyboard, and testing with a screen reader, are essential to catch issues that automation can miss. Better still, involve real users with disabilities in your testing process. We have documented our recommended process.

Wikipedia & Country References

Rather than duplicating efforts to look at the country details of the EAA, we've tried to consolidate some of the findings into the Wikipedia page on the legislation. This way, the legislation can continue to be updated by the community. Like accessibility, we expect that there will be updates needed about how the EAA is being implemented in each member state.

Conclusion: A Continuous Journey

The new wave of digital accessibility regulations, including the EAA and updated ADA rules, are not a burden. They are a catalyst for building a more inclusive and user-friendly web for everyone. Drupal, with its strong core features, a powerful ecosystem of modules, and a dedicated community, is perfectly positioned to help organizations meet these new standards and go beyond mere compliance. By combining solid technology with a human-centric approach, we can work towards a digital world where accessibility isn't an afterthought but an integral and effortless part of the creation process.

Note: For state and local governments in the USA, new regulations under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) have established WCAG 2.1 Level AA as the technical standard for web and mobile app accessibility. Many of the steps discussed here will also benefit your sites. You can find more information on these specific requirements on ADA.gov.

Some recent articles about Drupal & legislation

Here's a curated list of articles and resources that explicitly connect Drupal with the latest accessibility legislation/standards and the technical solutions to meet them:

Legislation & standards → what they mean to Drupal

• "Making sense of the European Accessibility Act, EN 301 549 and WCAG" (June 26, 2025) - Acquia
• "The European Accessibility Act: What is it and do I need to worry about it?" (May 14, 2025) - Zoocha
• "European Accessibility Act: What you need to know" (June 26, 2025) - Electric Citizen
• "The European Accessibility Act: What it means for your website in 2025" (24 June 2025) - Annertech