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The Drupal website I'm working on has a traditional grid style calendar. The main view of the calendar is based on the Full Calendar JS library. After testing it with a screen reader I decided it wasn't very accessible and because we lack the resources to make an accessible variant I instead created an alternative view that is a list and can be navigated easily with a screen reader.

My question is how do I best convey the information that the grid calendar is not accessible and instead that the user should use the list version. The list version is not hidden since its also valuable for sighted users who would prefer to see events listed like that.

Here are some ideas I had:

  1. Add a message at the top of the grid calendar saying "The following view of the calendar is not accessible to assistive technologies such as screen readers. Please use this accessible view instead." and link the message to the accessible view.
  2. Same as 1, but the message is visually hidden unless it gets focus from the keyboard.
  3. Add visually hidden text to the end of the links for both the grid view and the list view indicating which is accessible to AT and which is not.
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  • What about your keyboard users with normal sight? Can they use the grid calendar?
    – Laurel
    Commented Aug 28, 2021 at 16:42
  • AT users are a very diverse population still, so “not accessible” can mean a lot of things. It would be really helpful to be precise in what does and what does not work, and with which AT. This would also help us suggest a solution or best-practice. This typically is done in a site’s “Accessibility Declarations”, which is required by laws in some countries. This declaration goes into details which parts of the page are not working with AT, and what to do about it.
    – Andy
    Commented May 25, 2022 at 13:36

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I'd think you'd just hide the entire inaccessible calendar from screen readers using accessible hiding attributes on the calendar's container. If a user should never access an element, it's okay to hide it.

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  • Thanks for the response. I don't think this will work because the grid calendar still needs to be navigable by keyboard.
    – fallenturtle
    Commented Aug 25, 2021 at 20:48
  • Also, a considerable portion of screen reader users are not completely blind and need some coherence between the visual and the spoken contents.
    – Andy
    Commented May 25, 2022 at 13:32

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