Drupal Accessibility Checker

Drupal has been a leader in accessibility among CMS platforms for over a decade. The Drupal project maintains a formal accessibility policy, and core Drupal commits are reviewed for accessibility compliance. This commitment makes Drupal the CMS of choice for government agencies, universities, and enterprises that must meet strict accessibility requirements.

However, Drupal's accessibility strengths reside in core — the ecosystem of 50,000+ contributed modules and custom themes is where compliance breaks down. A perfectly accessible Drupal core can be undermined by a single inaccessible module or a custom theme that strips out semantic markup. As the ADA Title II April 2026 deadline approaches, organizations running Drupal need to verify that their complete site — not just Drupal core — meets WCAG 2.1 AA.

Despite Drupal's accessibility-first approach, real-world sites frequently have issues:

• Custom themes overriding accessible core markup — Drupal's Twig templates allow complete control over HTML output. Theme developers routinely strip landmark roles, heading hierarchy, and ARIA attributes from core templates to achieve visual designs.
• Contributed modules with accessibility gaps — popular modules for sliders, accordions, modals, and mega menus often ship without proper keyboard support or ARIA markup. The module evaluation process doesn't enforce accessibility.
• WYSIWYG content with structural problems — CKEditor content created by non-technical editors frequently has heading jumps (H1 to H4), tables without headers, images without alt text, and links that say "click here."
• Views output without semantic context — Drupal Views generates lists and tables that may lack proper table headers, list semantics, or descriptive link text when configured through the UI without attention to accessibility.
• Admin toolbar and Contextual Links in public output — Drupal's admin tools sometimes bleed into the public-facing page structure, adding confusing extra elements for screen reader users.

Drupal provides more accessibility tools and APIs than any other CMS. Run a CompliScan audit to identify specific violations, then leverage Drupal's strengths to fix them.

For theme-level issues, start with an accessible base theme like Olivero (Drupal's default frontend theme) or Claro (for admin). Both are WCAG 2.1 AA compliant and provide accessible template overrides as starting points. If you're using a custom theme, audit your Twig templates against Olivero's markup patterns.

For content quality, install the Editoria11y module — it adds real-time accessibility checking to the editing interface, catching heading jumps, missing alt text, and other content issues as editors work. Configure CKEditor to restrict heading levels and require alt text on image uploads. For module issues, check the module's issue queue for accessibility bugs and contribute patches when possible. CompliScan's AI generates Drupal-specific Twig template code and preprocess function fixes.

Drupal is the most widely used CMS in government — powering sites for the White House, the European Commission, and government agencies in over 150 countries. This isn't accidental: Drupal's accessibility policy and its Federal Government practice group have specifically targeted this market.

Government Drupal sites must meet Section 508 (federal) or ADA Title II (state and local, with the April 24, 2026 deadline). In the EU, the Web Accessibility Directive requires public sector websites to meet WCAG 2.1 AA and publish accessibility statements.

CompliScan provides the automated testing evidence that government Drupal teams need for their Accessibility Conformance Reports. Each scan maps violations to specific WCAG success criteria with severity levels, creating documentation that feeds directly into compliance reporting. For large Drupal multisite installations, our agency plan supports scanning hundreds of subsites from a single dashboard.