Sharepoint 2007: Accessibility

Over the last few months we've been working on a number of website/intranet deployments that are based on Microsoft Sharepoint 2007. The platform definitely has some strengths, and it is likely to be widely adopted but the degree to which it complies with accessibility requirements has been difficult to establish, and the 'out of the box' templates that have been provided by Microsoft have not helped this since they fail even to comply with general W3C coding standards.

However, after considerable debate among Sharepoint users, and some statements from Microsoft it looks as though the question is finally being answered and the answer seems to be that Sharepoint 2007 is nearly accessibile and contains end user functionality that can make it more accessible.

The last quarter of 2007 also saw the release of the feely available Accessibility Kit for Sharepoint 2007, which was developed by Hisoftware in partnership with Microsoft and is currently under evaluation here at Futurate.

In the digging on this subject that I've done over the last few days the following are probably the most valuable resources I've found for those people who are interested in current thinking:

• Understanding and enabling MOSS 'more accessible mode' (towards page bottom)
• The degree to which MOSS 2007 complies with the requirements of the W3C WCAG
• The Microsoft Sharepoint team blog
• The Official MOSS 2007 Accessibility Kit
• The Microsoft Developer Accessibility Centre
• Cross-browser compatibility in MOSS 2007
• Microsoft's statement on accessibility improvements in MOSS 2007.

I'm still looking into this and my intention is to expand the list above if I find anything interesting.