Team Rep Voting Results
When only one active team member votes, it’s tough to think there’s much interest in team repping. 
So, here are the results, but the low turnout begs the question of if this is an active team, or if we should be thinking about rolling in to existing groups (like UI is rolling into the main core group and designers will be embedded in all the other teams as well with a central design “interest group” vs a “responsible-for-this-product group”). But before we have that conversation, here are the voting results.
Only three people actually voted.
Please describe your role with the accessibility team.
- 1 – I don’t participate yet, but want to
- 1 – I am not currently active in the group, but have been in the past
- 1 – I am active in the group, and have been within the past 3 months
- 0 – I don’t plan to get involved
Describe your accessibility team activity.
- 1 – I contribute accessibility info to the Codex
- 1 – Other Option (“Working on developing accessibility-ready tag for theme directory”)
- 1 – I don’t contribute to the accessibility team activities
- 1 – I participate in plugin and theme reviews for wordpress.org directory
- 1 – I contribute to discussions on the blog
- 0 – I contribute to core patches
Votes:
1st rep – 3 votes for Esmi
2nd rep – One for Joe, one for Graham, one for Andrew Ozz
Neither Esmi or Graham voted. Esmi also proposed that she step back to the support role in the previous thread about team reps. The comment in that thread by Graham made it sound like he equates accessibility team with core accessibility. In short, it doesn’t feel particularly teamy up in here. An active team should have enough going on that each week there’s stuff to report. That’s the team rep job — to write the weekly reports on activity and issues facing the team.
Given the givens, my inclination is to ask Esmi to remain the point of contact for this group, and once we’re past the winter holidays, to work out what exactly falls within the scope of this group/what the product it’s responsible for is, and go from there to a decision around whether this is in fact a distinct project team or whether it’s an interest/skills group that contributes to multiple project teams (like design will be). If it’s decided then that it is in fact a distinct project team, we’ll figure out what to do about the lack of participation in the team rep voting re 2nd slot. Sound okay?
Sveta, 
Cyndy Otty 6:31 pm on December 24, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I reiterate my last comment of stating I am very against the idea of folding Accessibility into another group. While I understand the lack of activity here and all playing into that idea, I have a lifetime of experience dealing with similar issues being folded into others and the results are generally not favorable.
Also, I can only speak for myself, but I didn’t vote because I was waiting to see if Graham would respond to Esmi about being the second . . . and then I realized voting was over and I had missed my chance. I would have voted for Esmi and Graham, fwiw.
Joe Dolson 10:18 pm on December 24, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I would have voted for Graham, had he responded, but didn’t want to be volunteering somebody without their indication of interest. The low voter turnout had a lot to do with the lack of any expression of desire to actually be the team leader – there was little idea who to vote for.
I think it’s a very fair question about the role of this team: is accessibility a separate group, or is it an essential part of all groups? But if it’s an essential part of all groups, are there enough people involved to be able to effectively contribute to all groups?
I think it’s crucial that accessibility be a voice in core, UI, and theming: but I’m afraid that the issues for accessibility get overlooked in those larger environments.
Regardless, having a post-holidays discussion of the future role of The Accessibility team seems like a practical choice to me.
Rian Rietveld 8:12 am on December 26, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Sorry for not responding earlier. Esmi and Graham both would have my vote. If Esmi would like the job, that’s totally ok with me. I agree with Cindy: I am very against the idea of folding Accessibility into another group. But I also know this means a real commitment from us as a group.
So: I don’t participate yet (that much) but in the next year I will do my best to add to the discussion and research.
N Johnson 9:59 pm on December 26, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I create small volunteer WordPress sites. I have your feed in my RSS page, but find this feed frustrating and don’t pay much attention to it. My day job has nothing to do with WordPress but in my role as Front-end developer I am responsible for accessibility I am used to having much more control over CSS, jquery etc than plugins allow, unless I dig which I often do.
I haven’t read the entire thread, so if someone else has thought of this I apologize, but has anyone thought of why each image requires a “title” tag but not an “alt”. Why not merge them into one required “Description” field, that spits out alt and title.
Joe Dolson 12:24 am on December 28, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Well, this is off topic for the current thread, but I can give you a partial answer: it is not a good solution to combine title and alt, largely because there are situations where those two fields should be different. In fact, in most situations, they should be different. Requiring the alt attribute is problematic because purely decorative images should have blank alt attributes. In many cases, neither the title attribute nor the alt attribute would have any content — and this would be considered accessible.
Practically speaking, there should be a required title field for the image, so that there’s a title characteristic saved with the record. But then it should be a separate title from the one used in the image when inserted. From an interface standpoint, however, that’s confusing as hell…as a result, it really needs to be a content developer’s responsibility to handle appropriate title and alt attribute usages.
GrahamArmfield 9:04 am on December 29, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Apologies for not taking part in the vote, I have been really busy with client work just recently which obviously has to take precedence. But I have to admit I must have forgotten to check the box to receive follow up comments – so the date just slipped by.
I’m flattered to receive some (real/virtual) votes and sorry that people were waiting round for me to reply. It’s academic now but I would not have been able to commit at this stage to being a rep at this time. I’m hoping to get more active in the future so maybe next time I’ll feel able to put myself forward.
Agree that we should debate where this forum should go and what’s within its remit.
I hope you all had a good Christmas time.