As I have been following the a11y thread on items, little attention is given to this issue. This leads me to questions about customization and recommended update process.

We have found that we have to add a fair amount of customization to our LimeSurvey 3.21.4 installation in order to accommodate all user access modes (screen reader, color contrast, etc.) We also have customization to connect uploaded items to our cloud resources since we run on multiple servers in an ALB. (The changes are all being tracked using git for version control and CI/CD). We are also in the US and find we have to modify many user messages to be more clear and user-friendly.

I know other developers or teams out there do customization as well. I would like to ask what ideas other have or have in place that allow them to upgrade to newer versions of LimeSurvey so they do not fall far behind and can offer new features when they have a lot of customization like we do?

Are there any best practices in this area that can be shared? I saw that the updates include some PHP scripts to update any DB components. It did not look like there were delta updates or anything clear in the download zip -- just full versions.

rachellerena wrote: We have found that we have to add a fair amount of customization to our LimeSurvey 3.21.4 installation in order to accommodate all user access modes (screen reader, color contrast, etc.)

Wy don't create bug report and pull request ?
Then : you don't care about update

rachellerena wrote: We also have customization to connect uploaded items to our cloud resources since we run on multiple servers in an ALB. (The changes are all being tracked using git for version control and CI/CD).

Why don't create a plugin event to allow to create your onw polugin ?
Then : you don't care about update

rachellerena wrote: We are also in the US and find we have to modify many user messages to be more clear and user-friendly.

Maybe we can create a en-US language, and you can manage it then : you don't care about update

rachellerena wrote: I know other developers or teams out there do customization as well.

In genarel plugin if it specific, else pull request if it can be really interesting.

We do use a plugin for as much as we can. For example, our document repository in the cloud is a plug-in. However, we have to intercept all places in the code that point to the file system and make them use our plugin and/or plugin event instead. Have we missed something about the use of the plugins?

We will assess the accessibility items that we have customized to see if a pull request would be helpful to others. I need to see if those are only in our admin and user themes or also in the question types for when the users take the surveys.

rachellerena wrote: We do use a plugin for as much as we can. For example, our document repository in the cloud is a plug-in. However, we have to intercept all places in the code that point to the file system and make them use our plugin and/or plugin event instead. Have we missed something about the use of the plugins?

Maybe you need a new plugin event here ?
I mean : if there are a lack of event to do something with your plugin, it can be interesting to ask a new event via a feature request .

Upload file management seems a really great feature (to have in plugin).

rachellerena wrote: We will assess the accessibility items that we have customized to see if a pull request would be helpful to others. I need to see if those are only in our admin and user themes or also in the question types for when the users take the surveys.

Yes, and if there are a11y issue : please : report at issue !