Can you tell me if your theme validates according to:
* WCAG 1.0 Priority 1
* XHTML 1.0 Strict

Also, info on Section 508 compliance would also be useful.

I haven't found an easy way to scan through those themes which comply.

Comments

adrinux’s picture

adrinux commented
Status: Active » Closed (fixed)

I doubt it validates any of those, it might validate as XHTML 1.0 strict. But most drupal sites will have markup being derived from drupal/phptemplate, contrib modules and added content, if a theme validates it's nice, but only a small part of getting a site that validates.

mgifford’s picture

mgifford
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Primary language English
commented

Of course the theme is only part of the puzzle, but it is an important part of the puzzle.

Based on a Drupal Core install, all themes should be validated with every release to ensure that it has validates to the DocType it uses, that the CSS validates and that there is some verification for accessibility (even just alt tags). All of these are available in the Firefox Extension WebDeveloper Toolkit. For accessibility, Hera actually looks more useful, particularly for WCAG specs.

However just like initiatives within modules for coding standards, validation and lifting the bar by including unit testing, people should be able to know if these themes validate and are designed to modern standards.

Having accessible themes is increasingly important both as the population ages and as we are designing for a more mobile, machine readable world. New standards, like RDFa are also already in Drupal 7's roadmap and also have theme implications.

We're trying to blog about accessibility and Drupal. Still a lot more to be done about this, and I will try to do some testing of themes in the future.

mgifford’s picture

mgifford
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Primary language English
commented

It is set for " but could validate to strict if that is overriden. CSS doesn't validate.

Our testing was done on:
http://drupal6.dev.openconcept.ca/?theme=box_grey

adrinux’s picture

adrinux commented
Status: Closed (fixed) » Fixed

It uses a transitional doctype purely because you can't rely on users entering valid content.

> CSS doesn't validate
Ah, that border shortand always annoys me. It should work like that, if border shorthand were more consistant. Ah well fixed in a new release.

mgifford’s picture

mgifford
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Primary language English
commented

Thanks about fixing the CSS. Your theme does validate for strict too.

Our corporate site is transitional. Just so much content to go through before I could ensure that it validates as strict. However with tools like http://drupal.org/project/htmlpurifier and http://drupal.org/project/htmLawed it is much easier to force users to produce valid html.

It's just my take on this, but for new sites, I figure the theme should be strict because, well why not try it with a new site. If you don't aim for it, we can be confident we'll never get there. It's also more the norm now for Drupal themes.

But yeah, if reality strikes and it needs to be brought down to transitional it's a one line change.

Status: Fixed » Closed (fixed)

Automatically closed -- issue fixed for two weeks with no activity.