Accessibility Toolkit for Open Educational Resources (OER): Omeka

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.