PKP Minnesota Sprint Summary #4 – Accessibility

The fourth sprint summary from the PKP Minnesota Sprint, hosted by the University of Minnesota Libraries in May 2024, is now available. 

Sprints involve PKP community members joining diverse groups to work on PKP software and support. The University of Minnesota Libraries hosted six working groups at the PKP Minnesota Sprint in May. This is a summary of one such group's work.

Accessibility working group abstract

The group discussed accessibility improvements in the article landing page, covering the Download and References sections, and the HTML galley button for an alternative viewing. In the end, they also talked about adding accessibility information to the plugins that developers submit to the gallery. 

Working Group Members 

• Israel Cefrin, Public Knowledge Project (PKP)
• Ally Laird, Penn State University Libraries
• John Barneson, University of Minnesota Libraries

Background 

Major requirements are coming for government-funded institutions in the USA, especially in April 2026, that will require that all of their content conforms to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 AA. Many Open Journal Systems (OJS) themes do not meet this requirement yet, and only the Default Theme is actively being developed at the moment. 

Goals 

Focusing today on just accessibility for the front end of OJS, not for the back end, which will be future work and will focus on the Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG).

Notes on making a single page more accessible – Article View Page

HTML (simplified) galley version – removes the iframe and takes the reader to the HTML document, without the frame viewer. Currently, this is a child theme of the Default Theme with PKP, but it would be desirable to have it for all themes.

• The goal would be to make this available to any theme
• Israel will work on this project. John plans to add this feature to the U of MN Gopher Theme
• Provide more information about how the HTML (simplified) version is more screen-reader friendly (either via tag or actual text in the button to designate this)

Downloads table in article view page – is not accessible and will not allow non-sighted users to interact with the content. 

• Ensure that the Download heading section is fully localized (translated)
• There should either be a way to download this data in an accessible format
  • Accessible file format – CSV file, etc.
  • Translated into the local language
  • Appropriate cell/information headings
• Replace the inaccessible chart with an accessible table for interacting/viewing the data, with a second tab to view the data in chart form. Put the more accessible content (the table) first
• The chart/table (visualization) needs the year added to the data
• The charts only show the last 12 months of data, but the "Total Downloads" data is for all time
• Suggest two different download options, data for the last 12 months and data for all time
  • Tables need to have a clear label that designates what the timespan is for the data
• The graphic plotting needs to flip the reading orientation to R-to-L when the language selected by the user/reader is based on right-to-left orientation

Themes other than Default are not accessible and need to be addressed

• One approach is to make a notation within the plugin gallery about their level of accessibility (or that they are not accessible) – and include a VPAT for each
• Work with users of the Bootstrap (or other) themes to help contribute to making them more accessible
• Also, need a last updated date 

Reference list

Currently, it is a list of paragraphs, with no formal list structure

• Suggesting that this become a numbered list (without numbering the front-end content)
• Need to develop the back end of OJS to improve the front end
• Need to be able to upload a BibTex file to create and format the references

Results

We filed two issues in the GitHub repo and created 1 Pull Request for remediation:

1. Button to simplified HTML #9960 – describes possible improvements to the article landing page including the HTML button to the simplified HTML version
2. Accessibility Features Plugin #9961 – recommendation on adding more information on accessibility in the plugin gallery for plugin submission
3. Pull request  #4274 – it remediates the issue #9960

Next Steps 

There will be further discussion on other themes and plugins. Issue #9961 can serve as an initial point to future work auditing other themes, for example, Bootstrap.

Additional technical details

The HTML simplified button is an implementation based on a solution from the University of Waterloo. They shared the code of their child theme (Accessible Links), which has been merged into the Default Theme code. The button label is already localized to English and the code is ready to be translated to other languages using the current workflow for translation. 

Thank you

We once again thank the Sprint sponsors, host institutions, and all participants for their valuable contributions to the PKP user community. Special thanks to the University of Minnesota Libraries, Library Publishing Coalition, and Crossref for their support and partnerships.

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