WCAG Accessibility Standards

[dcr7]

Hello,

I apologize if this is not the best area to ask this question but seemed maybe the best fit.

How well does SMF 2.1.x conform to WCAG 2.0 and 2.1 accessibility standards?

When I searched, I only found old threads in archived boards and nothing particularly helpful or recent.

Thanks!

[Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen]

I wish I had an answer for you, but I don't actually think this is something that has been very thoroughly evaluated.
Best I can say right now is that SMF is free, so you can always try and find out if it is suitable for your needs - and if something needs further work, we would gladly accept feedback.

[Deaks]

As far as I know, it doesnt follow strictly rather more loosley.  However due to the customisability of SMF it can easily meets the needs of most if not all groups associated through the WCAG guidelines

[Antechinus]

Well. y'know, if the SMF organisation really wanted to know the answer to this, they could get an audit done on 2.1.

For a quick check: https://wave.webaim.org/

I can tell you that the traditional SMF Home button, with white text on an orange background, does not meet WCAG standards for contrast. It has a contrast ratio of 1.97:1, while WCAG AA standards require a minimum of 4.5:1, and WCAG AAA requires 7:1.

https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/

This is why I tried cheating the button colour in 2.1 to be "not quite orange" and gave the text a text-shadow: to try to get the contrast ratio more towards something accessible, while still fooling the team into thinking their home buttons were still white text on an orange background. Sneaky is best.

[dcr7]

Well. y'know, if the SMF organisation really wanted to know the answer to this, they could get an audit done on 2.1.

To be fair, from my research, I'm not entirely convinced any forum vendors--commercial, open source or otherwise--are taking accessibility seriously.  In the U.S., ADA-related lawsuits against websites continue to increase year after year.  And the liability isn't on companies making software for websites but on the companies running their own websites, so software vendors don't feel the effects directly.

So far, I've only found two forum packages that make any claims of even striving for WCAG compliance and both, in my opinion, are very basic forum options with a limited feature set.  And even with those, their discussions on WCAG are four or so years old.  Basically, everyone seems to be behind the curve on this.

It would be easier for end-users if a forum vendor would take the lead on this and show a solid commitment to meeting WCAG 2.1 (and future) AA or better standards.  Use available tools for testing, seeking volunteers to do manual testing and audits, maybe have a dedicated accessibility feedback board, even ask for special funding to help with coding to meet the standards.  I don't have the answers; these are just some suggestions off the top of my head.  All I know is that it's incredibly difficult if not impossible to find a forum solution that has both a reasonable feature set and WCAG compliance or at least movement towards WCAG compliance.

[dcr7]

For a quick check: https://wave.webaim.org/

I set up an install of SMF 2.1 RC3 and using the above tool, I get fewer errors with SMF than I did with a different forum solution I've been testing.  SMF's default theme also performs better than the Badem theme, which I really like.  I would have thought Badem would have had fewer errors but I was wrong.

SMF seems to be missing stuff like button labels, which shouldn't be hard to implement.  Not sure yet about anything else as I've only tested the first page and haven't gone deeper yet.