How frustrating. I’ve switched my website design over to Thematic, a really nice framework for WordPress design. I like the new design (which is just a light modification of the basic theme) because it’s simple and clean, and I’m trying out Thematic as a possible framework for other sites.
The problem is that the logo image (the image of my name and the robot) is included as a background image in the CSS stylesheet, not in the HTML/PHP, so there’s no way to do an alt tag. For most people, this is meaningless. For those who use screen readers or for those who do not have the images loading, however, there’s no logo at all.
Usually there’s an easy work-around, and I commonly hack the PHP header files. However, the way Thematic set up their theme, this isn’t nearly the simple process it should be. As it turns out, I’ve also lost my skip navigation and sitemap links that were in my previous site. I can go back and do some heavy lifting behind the scenes to fix these issues, but Thematic doesn’t make it easy – which means that it isn’t going to be a good option for future development.
Now this post isn’t intended to be critical of Thematic. I like the look of it a lot, and Ian Stewart, its designer, now works for Automattic and had a hand in designing the new WordPress default theme. So to say I don’t like Thematic is somewhat akin to tackling Goliath. What I’m really saying is that these issues are more symptomatic of a larger problem. As I’ve just discovered, most content management systems have true accessibility built into their systems, and those that do don’t do it consistently or thoroughly. They rely on the developers to insert the proper code and CSS to make them accessible.
WordPress, fortunately, is one that does do a lot to address accessibility issues, but few of the independent theme developers (for WordPress or other platforms) take accessibility into consideration. This means that most websites using a CMS are either going to be lacking accessibility features or force designers who care about accessibility to do all kinds of special hacks and jumping through hoops to make their sites accessible. For professional coders and developers, this can be resolved, but it is not a good situation for all the people who just want to build a small blog using a free theme. For them, there are few to no automatic accessibility options, and very little they can do on the front end to fix things.
If you’re reading this and know of any good WordPress themes or frameworks that build accessibility elements into their products, please let me know. And for those of you thinking about making themes for distribution, consider building them in a way that doesn’t make them less accessible by default.
As a web designer and fledgling theme designer myself, looks like I have my work cut out for me. In the meantime, guess I’m heading back to the drawing board. Thematic, it was nice working with you while it lasted.
