A DrupalCon Chicago session titled “Future-Proofing Accessibility: Strategies for Government & University Platforms” will examine practical approaches to accessibility implementation as compliance requirements evolve in the United States. Speakers from Lullabot will present lessons from government and university projects, highlighting Drupal’s accessibility capabilities, common pitfalls, and strategies for building compliant digital services.

Today we are talking about World Cancer Day, how they use Drupal, and why Drupal was the right choice with our guests Charles Andrew Revkin & Diego Costa. We'll also cover PDFa11y as our module of the week.

For show notes visit: https://www.talkingDrupal.com/544

Topics

• What Is World Cancer Day
• Why UICC Uses Drupal
• Diego Joins the Project
• Multilingual Strategy at Scale
• Drupal Architecture and AI Tools
• Vetting AI Moderation and Summaries
• AI Disclosure and Review
• Traffic Spikes and Scaling
• Drupal Stack and React Apps
• Campaign Theme United by Unique
• Yearly Content and Three Year Cycle
• Drupal Community and Open Access
• Custom AI Modules and Azure
• Future Improvements and AI Tagging
• Story Submission Formats
• Prevention PSA and Wrap Up

Resources

• World Cancer Day
• Union for International Cancer Control

Guests

Diego Costa - 1xinternet.com diegofcosta Charles Andrew Revkin - worldcancerday.org revkin

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi Steve Wirt - civicactions.com Swirt

MOTW Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

• Brief description:
  • Have you ever wanted to check PDF files for accessibility, as they're uploaded to your Drupal site? There's a module for that.
• Module name/project name:
  • PDFa11y
• Brief history
  • How old: created in Feb 2026 by Joshua Mitchell (joshuami), a friend of this podcast
  • Versions available: 1.0.1, which works with Drupal 10.2 and 11
• Maintainership
  • Actively maintained
  • Security coverage in process
  • Test coverage
  • Number of open issues: none
• Usage stats:
  • 0 sites
• Module features and usage
  • With the PDFa11y module installed, you can set its configuration, including whether to enable or disable automatic checking on upload, whether to block uploads that fail checks or just show warnings, a minimum PDF version requirement, and which accessibility checks to run
  • The module also sets creates three new permissions, Administer PDF accessibility settings, Run PDF accessibility checks, and View PDF accessibility report
  • Each PDF media item has an "Accessibility" tab where anyone with the necessary permissions can view the check results
  • Under the hood PDFa11y uses the smalot/pdfparser library to extract data from PDF files
  • Many sites rely on PDFs to make available content that they aren't able to migrate directly into Drupal content, so making sure that doesn't introduce its own accessibility regressions is an important step

The modern web runs on Open Source. The software itself remains freely available, but the infrastructure that sustains the ecosystem operates under fragile funding models. In a recent blog post, Drupal founder Dries Buytaert draws attention to a structural imbalance familiar across many open-source projects: the registries, repositories, CI systems, and update services developers rely on are widely treated as public goods, yet their costs are rarely shared proportionally by the organisations that depend on them.

In Drupal’s case, maintaining the ecosystem’s infrastructure costs roughly $3 million each year, covering servers, bandwidth, content delivery networks, software systems, and operational staff. When distributed across the installed base, that amounts to roughly $10 per active Drupal site annually. The Drupal Association currently operates with about $7.50 per site, leaving a modest but persistent gap. The shortfall does not immediately break systems, but it accumulates as technical debt: upgrades are postponed, legacy infrastructure remains in service longer than intended, and improvements move more slowly than the community might expect.

The deeper issue is structural rather than financial. Hundreds of thousands of sites rely on Drupal.org services, yet the cost of operating those systems remains largely disconnected from the organisations that benefit from them. Much of Drupal’s infrastructure is sustained through a combination of event revenue, sponsorship, corporate memberships, and generous in-kind contributions from partners such as AWS, the Oregon State University Open Source Lab, and Tag1. These contributions are invaluable, but they also illustrate how much the ecosystem depends on goodwill rather than predictable funding mechanisms.

Dries suggests that the next stage of maturity for open-source ecosystems may involve exploring models that better connect infrastructure usage with long-term sustainability. The software itself remains open and freely accessible, but the systems that support development, distribution, and updates must remain reliable as the ecosystem continues to grow. Raising the question now allows the Drupal community to discuss potential approaches calmly, before infrastructure pressures turn the conversation into an urgent problem.

The following stories highlight notable developments from across the Drupal ecosystem during the past week.

DISCOVER DRUPAL

• Drupal 12 to Remove Migrate Drupal and Migrate Drupal UI Modules from Core
• FlowDrop UI Agents Alpha Introduces Visual Workflow Builder for Drupal AI Agents
• Drupal Core Sets Navigation as Default Admin Experience in Place of Toolbar
• Drupal AI 1.3.0 Introduces Guardrails, Editorial Workflows, and Observability
• drupalorg-cli 0.8.0 Adds Native GitLab Workflow Commands

EVENT

• Lessons from Building Europe’s Largest Public Sector Drupal Platform at DrupalCon Chicago 2026
• Beyond the Commits: Join the Drupal Coffee Exchange at DrupalCon Chicago 2026
• Kushal Agrawal to Share Career Story in “Power of Participation” Session at DrupalCamp Delhi 2026
• Peter Wolanin to Present Session on Drupal Plugin API at DrupalCamp NJ 2026
• Editoria11y 3.x to Receive First Public Tour at DrupalCamp NJ 2026
• DrupalSouth 2026 Splash Awards Open Applications for Judges
• Ship Faster, Catch Bugs Earlier: How Georgia Rebuilt QA and UAT for 80+ Drupal Sites
• Drupal 25th Anniversary Gala Ticket Sales Close 18 March
• Making Governance Visible: Embedding Content Rules Directly Into Drupal

ORGANIZATION NEWS

• The DropTimes to Convene March Townhall on 18 March

DRUPAL COMMUNITY

• Drupal Scotland Names New Committee and Office Holders

Additional developments from across the Drupal ecosystem were published during the week. Readers may follow The DropTimes on LinkedIn, Twitter, Bluesky, and Facebook for continuing updates. The publication also maintains a presence on Drupal Slack in the #thedroptimes channel.

Thank you.

Alka Elizabeth
Sub-editor
The DropTimes

Years ago, in the early Drupal days, you would see a mantra everywhere: "Don't hack core".

It showed up in issue queues, conference talks, support channels, stickers, and even on T-shirts. It was short and memorable, and it solved a real problem: too many people were modifying Drupal Core instead of extending it properly.

Over time the mantra worked. The ecosystem matured. Not just the software itself, but also the habits and expectations around it. Today you rarely hear people say "Don't hack core".

With AI changing how code gets written, we may need a new mantra.

In Open Source, all code needs to be understood and reviewed before it can be merged. That responsibility belongs to both contributors and maintainers. AI is changing how code gets written, but it does not change that responsibility. In fact, it may make it easier to forget.

Code you don't understand becomes someone else's problem. In Open Source, that someone is often the maintainer reviewing your patch.

Offloading bad code onto maintainers slows down reviews for everyone. Plus, you miss the chance to learn from the code and grow as a developer.

It shouldn't matter what tools you use. But if you submit code, you should be able to explain what it does, why it works, and how it interacts with the rest of the code.

Everyone starts somewhere. Even today's top contributors submitted imperfect patches early on. You are welcome here, with or without AI tools. Perfection isn't required, but understanding your code is. Own your code.

Maybe it's time for some new stickers and T-shirts.

Never submit code you don't understand.

Thanks to Natalie Cainaru, Jeremy Andrews and Gábor Hojtsy for reviewing my draft.

As we look ahead to DrupalCon Europe 2026 in Rotterdam this October, we invite organizations, agencies, and digital leaders to submit their stories to the Success Stories & Innovation track.

This track showcases how Drupal is used today to power far more than websites. Across industries, Drupal enables organizations to build digital platforms, integrate complex systems, automate workflows, and create scalable ecosystems that support real business needs. From AI-driven personalization to DevOps automation and composable architectures, we want to highlight real-world projects that demonstrate how Drupal drives innovation.

In today’s fast-moving digital landscape, organizations must continuously evolve to stay competitive. Digital transformation is no longer just about launching a new website — it’s about building connected systems, automating processes, and delivering consistent experiences across multiple channels. Drupal plays a key role in this transformation as a flexible, secure, and extensible open-source platform that adapts to complex enterprise environments.

 

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         Foto by Paul Johnson  https://flic.kr/p/2rzSoJP

Why Drupal?

Drupal is not just a content management system. It is a powerful platform that can act as the backbone of digital ecosystems, integrating content, data, services, and applications into a unified experience.

Organizations use Drupal to power digital experience platforms, API-first architectures, multi-site environments, and enterprise integrations. Its flexibility, scalability, and strong security model make it a trusted choice for governments, universities, global companies, and nonprofits.

With the rapid growth of AI, automation, and composable architectures, Drupal continues to evolve. Teams are using Drupal together with modern DevOps pipelines, personalization engines, headless front-ends, and cloud platforms to create future-ready digital solutions.

Today, Drupal powers more than 1.6 million active sites worldwide and supports platforms used by governments, media companies, universities, healthcare providers, and global enterprises. 

 

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         Foto by Paul Johnson https://flic.kr/p/2rzSprX

How organizations use Drupal for digital transformation

Drupal is used in a wide range of industries to power critical digital systems, large-scale platforms, and complex content environments. For many organizations, Drupal is not just a website CMS, but the foundation of a broader digital infrastructure.

Across sectors, Drupal supports platforms such as:

• Government and public sector services
  Secure, accessible, and compliant platforms used by citizens, agencies, and institutions.
   
• Higher education and research ecosystems
  Multi-site university platforms, student portals, research publishing, and internal collaboration systems.
   
• Enterprise and corporate platforms
  Global websites, intranets, partner portals, and multi-brand environments.
   
• E-commerce and transactional systems
  Commerce platforms connected to payment providers, product systems, and ERP integrations.
   
• Healthcare and life sciences platforms
  Secure, multilingual, and compliant solutions for hospitals, research organizations, and health agencies.
   
• Media, publishing, and content-heavy platforms
  High-traffic sites, editorial workflows, and multi-channel publishing systems.
   
• Nonprofit and international organizations
  Fundraising platforms, campaign sites, and global content networks.
   
• Content hubs and API-driven platforms
  Drupal as a central system connected to multiple front-ends, apps, and services.
   

In many of these environments, Drupal is part of a larger ecosystem that includes cloud infrastructure, external services, internal tools, and custom applications. We want to showcase how organizations are using Drupal in these real-world contexts. 

 

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         Foto by Paul Johnson  https://flic.kr/p/2rzR6US

DrupalCon Europe 2026 Rotterdam: Share your success story

Join us at DrupalCon Europe 2026 in Rotterdam this October and present your case study in the Success Stories & Innovation track.

This track is designed for organizations, agencies, digital managers, CTOs, CMOs, product owners, and business leaders who use Drupal to build impactful digital platforms and innovative solutions.

Our sessions are aimed at decision-makers and teams who want to understand how Drupal is used in real projects — not just as a CMS, but as part of larger digital ecosystems.

Whether you are building enterprise platforms, integrating AI, automating workflows, or connecting multiple systems, your experience can help others learn what is possible with Drupal.

What can you showcase?

For the Success Stories & Innovation track, we are especially looking for case studies that go deeper into how Drupal is used, how projects were built, and what makes them innovative.

We welcome submissions that explore themes such as:

• Drupal as part of a larger ecosystem or platform architecture
• Using Drupal beyond traditional websites
• Composable, headless, or API-first implementations
• Using AI in Drupal projects, including content automation, personalization, or intelligent search
• DevOps, CI/CD, and automated deployment workflows
• Integrations with CRM, ERP, marketing, or data platforms
• Automation of editorial, content, or business processes
• Managing multi-site, multi-brand, or multi-product platforms
• Building long-term, scalable, and maintainable systems
• Security, compliance, and accessibility at scale
• Using Drupal as a content hub, data hub, or integration layer

We are particularly interested in stories that show how decisions were made, what challenges were solved, and what others can learn from the experience. 

Tell us not only what you built, but why you built it that way.

 

Image

         Foto by pdjohnson https://flic.kr/p/2rzLG3s

Why participate?

Tell your story

DrupalCon is the perfect place to share how your organization uses Drupal to solve real problems — whether you are building platforms, integrating systems, improving workflows, or creating new digital experiences.

Give back to the community

DrupalCon is about learning, sharing, and connecting with one of the largest open-source communities in the world. Your experience can inspire others and help shape the future of Drupal.

Submit your case study: https://events.drupal.org/rotterdam2026/submit-your-session-proposal 

Are you ready to showcase your Drupal-powered innovation? Submit your proposal for the Success Stories & Innovation track at DrupalCon Europe 2026 in Rotterdam and share your story with the global Drupal community.

Let’s build the future of digital experiences together.

See you in Rotterdam!

Incorporating AI into my development workflow

I've just begun exploring how to incorporate AI into my development workflow to tackle ongoing challenges for my client. Drupal's AI initiative is progressing rapidly with continuous updates and improvements. At DrupalCon Chicago, there will be numerous discussions about the future of AI in Drupal.

At the same time, through various channels like the Talking Drupal podcast and Planet Drupal feeds, we are hearing about people achieving significant success with AI-driven development using coding agents such as Claude Code. There is understandable hesitation within the Drupal community about adopting AI. Additionally, there is a lot of buzz and hype around AI replacing traditional software development.

Personally, I cut through the hype to find the clear truths about AI. I am specifically listening to what senior engineers like Steve Yegge, Kent Beck, and Martin Fowler say about the future of AI, software, and software development. I recently found "The Pragmatic Engineer" podcast, which, for me, is the best place to get genuine, honest, and tangible insights into the future of AI-driven development.

Adapting and adopting AI-driven development

My personal conclusion is that, for better or worse, AI-driven development is something individuals, teams, companies, and communities need to adapt to and adopt. For me, the starting point is setting up a local Drupal...Read More

The update brings new features, but above all greater maturity to the practical use of AI in Drupal. It strengthens governance, editorial workflows, and production operations.

 

Accessibility has long been part of Drupal’s core philosophy, yet accessibility audits continue to uncover recurring issues across many Drupal websites. Findings from the DrupalFit Challenge Vienna Edition show that even professionally built Drupal projects can struggle with problems such as insufficient colour contrast, missing alternative text, and improper heading structure. As regulatory requirements expand and digital services become more essential, accessibility reviews are becoming increasingly important for Drupal teams working across government, education, healthcare, and enterprise platforms. The audit results offer practical insight into where development teams can strengthen accessibility practices across Drupal projects.

The developers at Capellic share how they're integrating AI tools like Junie and Rovo Dev into their daily Drupal work — not to replace expertise, but to eliminate repetitive tasks, reduce friction, and free up time for more creative and complex problem-solving.

DrupalCon is coming back to Chicago, March 23 to 26, and Tag1 will be there as a Champion Plus sponsor with sessions, coffee, and a lot to talk about.

This year's conference coincides with Drupal's 25th anniversary, which feels like the right moment to take stock of where we've been and where the platform is headed. We've been building and contributing to Drupal since its earliest days, and the work the community is doing right now, particularly around AI integration, Workspaces, and modern developer tooling, is some of the most exciting we've seen.

We're bringing three sessions to DrupalCon Chicago this year, covering testing, enterprise content staging, and what happens when you point AI at a seriously complex migration.

Drupal Test Traits: Learn by Example

Moshe Weitzman | Tuesday, March 24 at 9:00 AM | Salon A-1

Moshe will kick off our session lineup with Drupal Test Traits (DTT), the open source testing framework he built that takes a fundamentally different approach to testing content-heavy Drupal sites. Rather than spinning up empty databases and populating them with mock data, DTT tests against your actual site content, so you're validating the things that actually matter to your editors and visitors. Expect practical examples drawn from Massachusetts' mass.gov testing suite.

Workspaces Is Revolutionizing Drupal Core

Fabian Franz & Peta Hoyes | Wednesday, March 25 at 3:00 PM | Salon A-4

Fabian and Peta will present on Workspaces, one of Tag1's major contributions to Drupal core and the foundation for true enterprise content management in Drupal. If you've followed our recent work on the Drupal AI Initiative, you already know that Workspaces is the governance layer we're extending to manage AI-driven changes, but the session goes well beyond AI, covering site-wide content staging, publishing workflows, rollbacks, translation management, A/B testing, and more. If your organization has outgrown single-item content moderation, this is the session for you.

Migrate Smarter: How a Structured AI Methodology Unlocked a Complex Drupal 7 to 11 Migration

Marco Molinari | Wednesday, March 25 at 3:00 PM | Salon A-5

Yes, we know, we're double-booked. How awkward! Marco's talk on AI-assisted migration covers how he used BMAD (Breakthrough Method for Agile AI-Driven Development) to migrate an Italian humor site (132K nodes, 100K newsletter subscribers, 18 custom modules, 93 contrib modules) from Drupal 7 to Drupal 11. What makes the session valuable is Marco's candid assessment of where AI-assisted development delivered real acceleration and where human expertise was still irreplaceable.

Come See Us (and Try Something New)

You'll find us at the big orange Tag1 booth on the expo floor with coffee in the morning, cool drinks in the afternoons, and comfy seating all day. Come recharge with us!

We're also offering a special sneak peek of Tag1's Drupal AI site builder. It can generate multi-page sites with real content, multilingual support, and layout customization, all using Plus Suite, Workspaces and Drupal best practices. If you catch Fabian and Peta's Workspaces session, the demo is a natural next step to see that content staging infrastructure in action. And if you've read our recent post on joining the Drupal AI Initiative, this is where that work comes to life. Come play with it, and tell us how you're using AI on your own sites.

On Tuesday evening, we'll have two tables at the Drupal 25th Anniversary Gala. We're looking forward to great food, a special anniversary beer, live music, and a chance to celebrate 25 years of Drupal with the people who built it. We'd love to see you there.

See you in Chicago!

Drupal 11: Making Interactive Elements With HTMX

HTMX is a JavaScript library that allows you to make ajax calls and create CSS transitions without writing any JavaScript code. It works by adding attributes to HTML elements, which it then uses to set up and perform ajax requests, swap elements, and a few other things.

It was added to Drupal in version 11.3.0* and gives developers the ability to create interactive elements using render arrays and HTML attributes. The intent is to replace the entire ajax sub-system with one built around HTMX, and there is quite a lot of work ahead to accomplish this task.

* Technically, HTMX has been in Drupal since 11.2.0, but only as an experimental library. Drupal 11.3.0 features the full HTMX library and a number of helper classes to make life easy.

In this article we will look at how HTMX is integrated into Drupal, and what services exist to help you use it within the Drupal system. 

Since this article is quite long I have created a table of contents to assist in scrolling to the relevant sections.

philipnorton42 Sun, 03/15/2026 - 19:01

Drupal page development traditionally involves multiple hand-offs between designers, developers, and content teams, often extending implementation timelines. A session proposed for Drupal Camp Delhi 2026 by Naveen Prakash Duraisamy examines how AI-assisted design tools can shorten this process. The presentation focuses on combining Lovable AI with Drupal Canvas and Single Directory Components to transform natural language prompts into deployable Drupal components while maintaining governance and code ownership within Drupal projects.