Scaling Accessibility QA Across 56 Affiliate Websites
How rigorous, standards-driven testing kept a nationwide nonprofit’s Drupal multisite platform accessible, bilingual, and release-ready — through everyday maintenance and now a live Drupal 11 migration.
Keeping accessibility and consistency intact across a 56-site nonprofit web platform.
The client is one of the oldest and largest national nonprofit membership organisations serving blind and low-vision Americans, operating a network of 56 affiliates, chapters, divisions, and partner organisations across the United States. Its family of websites is the organisation's central platform for advocacy, membership, events, resources, and community engagement — so reliability and accessibility aren't optional, they're the mission. The engagement supports the maintenance, enhancement, and accessibility of a Drupal multisite platform serving all 56 affiliate websites, built on two standardised templates, with several affiliates supporting multiple languages — including English and Spanish — to deliver a consistent, secure, and inclusive digital experience. Scope spans feature development, bug fixes, production support, accessibility compliance, and ongoing modernisation. The project has now entered a Drupal 11 upgrade phase, migrating affiliate websites from Drupal 10 to Drupal 11 while preserving existing functionality, multilingual content, forms, custom features, accessibility, and overall user experience — validated against WCAG 2.1 AA and Section 508 standards across every supported browser and device.
Scaling QA across 56 affiliate sites without ever compromising on accessibility.
AFFILIATE WEBSITES MAINTAINED & TESTED
LANGUAGES VALIDATED — ENGLISH & SPANISH
ENVIRONMENTS TESTED EVERY RELEASE
ACCESSIBILITY COMPLIANCE VALIDATED
Testing at scale without breaking accessibility, language, or content integrity.
56 independently configured affiliate websites, two templates, two languages, and a strict accessibility mandate meant every release carried real risk — and the project's current Drupal 11 migration raised the stakes further.
56 Unique Affiliate Configurations
Each affiliate website carries its own content, layout, forms, and configuration, built on one of two standardised templates. Every release needed validation broad enough to catch affiliate-specific regressions without slowing delivery.
Multilingual Validation
Some affiliate websites support both English and Spanish, while others are Spanish-only — requiring full multilingual regression across content, navigation, forms, and accessibility, not just a translation spot-check.
Non-Negotiable Accessibility Compliance
As a website platform serving blind and low-vision users, every release had to hold up to WCAG 2.1 AA and Section 508 standards, validated directly with screen readers (NVDA and JAWS) rather than automated checks alone.
Drupal 10 → 11 Migration Complexity
The ongoing migration requires validating every migrated affiliate site to confirm existing functionality, multilingual content, forms, custom features, accessibility, and overall user experience are preserved — with no regressions permitted on a platform this mission-critical.
Comprehensive QA across every affiliate site, language, and release.
The QA team validates every affiliate website and every migration through a full testing suite — functional, regression, UI, responsive, cross-browser, accessibility, multilingual, and production smoke testing — across Development, QA, UAT, and Production environments.
Functional & Regression Testing
Validated feature development, bug fixes, and every release across Development, QA, UAT, and Production environments — protecting existing functionality across all 56 affiliate sites on every deployment.
Accessibility Testing (NVDA & JAWS)
Validated WCAG 2.1 AA and Section 508 compliance using real assistive technologies — NVDA and JAWS — rather than relying solely on automated accessibility scanners, ensuring the experience genuinely works for blind and low-vision users.
Multilingual Validation
Verified English and Spanish content, navigation, forms, and accessibility across bilingual and Spanish-only affiliate sites, ensuring a consistent experience regardless of language.
Cross-Browser & Responsive Testing
Validated layout, functionality, and accessibility across supported browsers and devices using BrowserStack, Chrome DevTools, and Firefox Developer Tools.
Production Smoke Testing
Ran targeted smoke testing after every production deployment to confirm critical paths — content, forms, navigation, accessibility — were unaffected before sign-off.
Drupal 11 Migration Validation
Validating each migrated affiliate site against its pre-migration baseline — functionality, multilingual content, forms, custom features, accessibility, and user experience — as sites move from Drupal 10 to Drupal 11.
What the work delivered.
Multiple affiliate websites successfully validated and released across Development, QA, UAT, and Production environments, with high-quality releases sustained throughout the engagement.
WCAG 2.1 AA and Section 508 accessibility compliance validated on an ongoing basis using NVDA and JAWS — keeping the platform genuinely usable for the blind and low-vision community it serves.
Multilingual affiliate websites validated consistently
English and Spanish content, navigation, forms, and accessibility confirmed across every supported site.
Close collaboration with developers and stakeholders on defect identification, reporting, and verification supported timely resolution and successful production deployments.
The phased Drupal 11 migration is being validated affiliate-by-affiliate, with functionality, content integrity, accessibility compliance, and user experience confirmed unaffected as each site moves forward.
The stack.
Testing a nonprofit platform built to serve blind and low-vision users meant accessibility couldn't be an afterthought — it had to be validated directly, with real assistive technology, on every release across every affiliate site. That discipline, combined with rigorous multilingual and cross-browser coverage, has kept 56 affiliate websites reliable through continuous enhancement and is now carrying the organisation safely through its Drupal 11 migration.