TechnologyBest Practices

Drupal: Web CMS for Accessible Canadian Digital Government

As described in our Digital Accessibility best practices feature, the open source web CMS Drupal can play a key role in implementing those practices and achieving compliance with the C-18 bill.

On this page they discuss the general accessibility capabilities of the system, the latest accessibility features in release 8 and how to do an accessibility review. The AgileDrop discusses the top ten accessibility plugin modules.

It comes with implementation recipes tailored for the Canadian Government such as a web experience toolkit, that enables easier building of bilingual sites and achieving compliance with the W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

It has a long history with the Canadian public sector. In 2014 the Canadian Government Executive wrote about it’s early adoption by pioneers like St. John and Ottawa, as part of their Open Government strategies to better share Open Data and enable Open Innovation practices.

Featured Vendor: Danavero.

Danavero is a technology-based solutions provider headquartered in Toronto and deploying services worldwide. Their Drupal development is just one reason why they are one of the top web development companies in Canada.

Describing the ongoing evolution of the Drupal ecosystem Suzanne Dergacheva of EvolvingWeb shares how with the government’s new Open First philosophy, Drupal is poised to become the default choice for government web platforms, and is growing across sectors including Education and in Quebec, citing some keynote examples like Tourism Quebec and the Aéroports de Montréal.

Interviewing Drupal founder Dries Buytaert and Chris Smith of OPIN Software, another Drupal development agency, the Ottawa Business Journal also reports on this growing adoption of Drupal,. The shift from proprietary web CMS to open source is enabling the public sector to better share innovations and best practices, realizing a considerable cost saving while also modernizing the web experience.

The Yukon Government is another example, estimating they will save $75k per annum thanks to this shift.

Accessible Digital Government

The specific topic of the role Drupal can play in meeting the accessibility needs of Canadian government was explored in a 2018 online meetup for the Drupal Atlantic Canada group.

Speaking at the 2018 Drupal North conference Hillary Hartley, Ontario’s Chief Digital Officer, shares the province’s experiences of adopting Drupal to be the centrepiece of their digital transformation strategy.

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