Research Help: Accessibility Toolkit for Course Materials: Omeka

Omeka General

OMEKA

Omeka is a content management system that serves as open-source web publishing platforms for sharing digital collections and creating media-rich online exhibits.

Omeka Classic is a web publishing platform for sharing digital collections and creating media-rich online exhibits.
Omeka S is a next-generation web publishing platform for institutions interested in connecting digital cultural heritage collections with other resources online.

Omeka.ORG - Omeka Classic (Library/College hosted version) [Updated 2020]

About Omeka Classic:

Omeka Classic creates a publicly available web presence from the moment you create the installation, which you can build out and customize from there. Every Omeka Classic site initially includes pages for browsing Items and Collections as well as a home page. You can use these items in as many Exhibits as you or your users want to build.

Accessibility Statement | Omeka.ORG Omeka Classic
The Omeka team is committed to making Omeka Classic an accessible option for building collections and exhibits online. We are working to make Omeka Classic’s core code accessible and will continue to make accessibility for persons with disabilities a priority as we develop the code. Omeka strives to adhere to W3C web design standards and to be compliant with Section 508 of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The following statements apply to Omeka versions 2.3 and higher.

Front End (Public view)

The public view of Omeka Classic has the following features to improve accessibility:

ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) landmarks for tabbing through page content, when not using a mouse or using a screen reader;
Ability to skip navigation menu and go straight to content when using a keyboard or screen reader to navigate the site (in all RRCHNM-produced themes);
Semantic HTML5 markup.

These features are included in the core code as well as the plugins and themes which come bundled with Omeka Classic for download (Plugins: Exhibit Builder, Coins, Simple Pages; Themes: Thanks Roy, Berlin, Seasons).

There are also Skip Nav and ARIA Landmarks on all Omeka Classic themes produced by RRCHNM which do not come bundled with the download of Omeka Classic from Omeka.org (Emiglio, Santa Fe, Minimalist, Rhythm).

Please note that although the core code for Omeka Classic and its bundled themes and plugins conform to the above standards, sites built with Omeka Classic which have been customized or which are using non-RRCHNM themes and plugins may lack some or all of these options. While we encourage developers to consider accessibility, we cannot ensure that their code includes ARIA Landmarks, SkipNav in the themes.

Back End (Administrative view)

The administrative dashboard of Omeka Classic has the following features for accessibility:

Ability to skip navigation menu and go straight to content when using a keyboard or screen reader to navigate the site. If you do not skipnav, the sequence is: settings (top navigation bar), plugins (left navigation bar), content;
ARIA landmarks for screen readers on the Admin Dashboard, designating the header, navigation, footer, and main body content;
Semantic HTML5 markup.

VPAT for Omeka.ORG - Omeka Classic (Library hosted versions) [pdf link]
Date: Sept. 5, 2015
VPAT version: 1.3
Product Version: Omeka 2.3.1 (Library hosted version)

Omeka.ORG - Omeka S (Library/College hosted version) [Updated 2020]

About Omeka S:

Omeka S allows you to create linked data, using existing resources (items) to describe new resources. This functionality can be very helpful if you have multiple datasets which would benefit from relationships between the items (for example letter writers and their letters). Omeka S sites must be built from scratch and so may take more planning than an Omeka Classic site. Omeka S can host many sites building from a shared pool of resources.

Accessibility Statement | Omeka.ORG Omeka S
The Omeka team is committed to making Omeka S an accessible option for building collections and exhibits online. We are working to make the core code accessible and will continue to make accessibility for persons with disabilities a priority as we develop the code. Omeka strives to adhere to W3C web design standards and to be compliant with Section 508 of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Front End (Public view)

The themes produced for Omeka S by RRCHNM have has the following features to improve accessibility:

ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) landmarks for tabbing through page content, when not using a mouse or using a screen reader;
Semantic HTML5 markup.

Please note that although the core code for Omeka S conform to the above standards, installations of Omeka S which have been customized or which are using non-RRCHNM modules and themes may lack some or all of these options. While we encourage developers to consider accessibility, we cannot guarantee that their code includes ARIA Landmarks, SkipNav, or other accessibility considerations.

Back End (Administrative view)

The administrative dashboard of Omeka S has the following features for accessibility:

ARIA landmarks for screen readers on the Admin Dashboard, designating the header, navigation, main content, and footers.
Semantic HTML5 markup.

VPAT for Omeka.ORG - Omeka Classic (Library hosted versions) [pdf link]
Date: Aug. 14, 2019
VPAT version: 2.0
Product Version: Omeka S version 2.0.1 (Library hosted version)

Note from VPAT author: "The VAPT is focused on the admin interface - we can’t really make a VPAT for the public side (beyond the themes we create) because once someone creates their own theme they may add elements which are not accessible." Megan Brett, Digital History Association at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University.

Omeka.NET (Omeka hosted version)

Accessibility Statement | Omeka.NET
Omeka.net strives to provide an accessible, 508 compliant web service. As such, we have performed an assessment of our product, and provide the results in the Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) linked below. Since the assessment was completed, we have addressed a number of the outstanding issues, and will continue to work to provide the most compliant product possible.
VPAT for Omeka.NET (Vendor hosted version) [pdf link]
Date: Sept. 4, 2015
VPAT version: 1.3
Product Version: Omeka 2.3.1 (Vendor hosted version)

Alternative Text (Alt-text) Instructions

Omeka.ORG

"Alt text" is set to the file's TITLE in Omeka.
The file name is used on upload/import, but can be edited afterward.
On Omeka.ORG, theme files can be edited to use different information in the alt field.

Omeka.NET

It is not currently configurable on Omeka.net.

Omeka Classic Accessibility Plugins [New 2020]

PDF Text (download version 1.3)
By Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media.
Pdf Text enables searching on PDF files uploaded to an Omeka Classic item by extracting their texts and saving them to their file records. PdfText strips out images and layout in the original file, leaving only searchable text. Read PDF Text Manual

Omeka S Accessibility Modules [New 2020]

Alt Text (download version 1.1.0)
By John Flatness. An Omeka S module to allow users to specify custom alt text for media. The Alt Text module requires at least Omeka S 1.2.0.
Extract Ocr (download version 2.0.1)
By bubdxm, completed by Daniel Berthereau. Extract OCR text in XML from PDF files, allowing fulltext searching within Universal Viewer plugin for omeka S need IIIF-Search module). Creates xml files from pdf using command line tool pdftohtml. The xml format is "pdf2xml" and it is stored as a new file associated with the item.