Ways to Organise the Accessibility Initiative
Since the news that some WordPress teams are to be merged, I’ve been thinking (a lot) about this group might move forward. First off, I need to say that I do understand why it might be necessary to merge some groups. Too much fragmentation is as bad as an overly centralised system when trying to manage/coordinate work whilst also ensuring a constant trickle of new blood.
But I don’t think merging is the answer for this group. Accessibility is too over-arching an area to work well if we try to split it down into separate groups. We’re likely to lose impetus with over-dilution, Plus we will loose the opportunity to attract assistive technology users who could, longer term, become a panel of expert testers. We actively need an ongoing dialogue between technical developers and non-technical users to help wordpress.org develop effective accessible solutions.
So I feel that we need to stay as a separate group but with direct links into the other groups – possibly via designated lead developers.
If that’s possible, then we’ll also need to work hard to coordinate and communicate the changes that are taking place — both in terms of what we’ve achieved and to highlight work in other groups where we might be able to contribute. To that end, I’m going to see if I can pull in feeds from some of the other groups to see if will help us to highlight areas where we need to get involved.
If you’re already involved in discussions in other groups or in Trac, then please let us know what you are doing via a status update here. If you do not have posting privileges here, let me know and I’ll sort that out for you.
In the meantime, if anyone has any other ideas of how we can ficus our efforts more effectively, then please chime in.
Nelson 3:52 pm on January 8, 2013 Permalink
esmi, by all means, if there is a way that non-technical people such as myself could help with testing, please let us know. Accessibility is so crucial to making knowledge available to those without the privilege of health and wealth.
The one idea I have for “focusing” attention on accessibility issues is unfortunately, to divide them up. It’s amazing to me how “different” the technology must be to address “different” accessibility needs–and I find that expertise in one area (e.g., blindness) does not lead to expertise in other areas (e.g., mobility issues)–so possibly breaking down groups by accessibility needs would help, I think.
Also, I am stunned at some of the assistive technology available on iPads. Perhaps, if some attention could be given to making WordPress work on iPad technology, that alone would help many who depend on the technology.
I also want to say, THANK YOU for what you do here. It matters.
Best regards.
esmi 4:26 pm on January 8, 2013 Permalink
Dividing issues up into areas based on “need” or technology tends to create as many problems as it solves, in my experience because the needs of one group can run counter to the other (visual impairment versus dyslexia immediately springs to mind). What is really needed are solutions that balance disparate needs without skewing towards any one group — including those without any special need. Those of us with a technical background in accessibility tend to approach any one situation by looking at it through “different eyes” so that we get a broad idea of what barriers exist for different groups and how to correct them without creating new ones in the process.
With regards to how you can help — firstly, tell us about any specific problems you are facing. We try to identify problem areas but we undoubtedly miss some. So we need people like yourself to keep us on our toes and point out the problems.
Secondly, if you are interested in joining an expert panel of testers, please contact me using esmi [at] quirm [dot] net. And thank you for your comments,
Nelson 4:52 pm on January 8, 2013 Permalink
esmi, thank you for the rapid response.
The problem is that I am trying to set up a website for a wide variety of users. It’s for a public institution, which fortunately, by law, requires accessibility, but means accessibility for all disabilities.
The site expertise seems to be with blind users, but from the limited exposure I’ve had with testing, the blind user did not use the features we built into the site for the screen readers. The screen readers seem to rely on technology that is one generation behind–they haven’t caught up to HTML5 standards. This is fine, as I find that HTML5 standards aren’t widely supported by browsers yet and don’t really add anything to accessibility.
He surprised us, and largely used simple HTML markup to navigate, which is why I’m so adamant about building site using old HTML markup standards h1, then h2, etc. and keeping it simple in terms of markup, CSS, and navigation. And, from what I understand, basic HTML markup is very friendly to assistive technology; it’s when people get fancy with the markup that assistive technology runs into problems. But the point is that if we keep the HTML clean, I think we’ve got the blind users covered.
However, building a site for a public institution can’t just be about blind users. Although we haven’t yet had a user with mobility and/or physical restriction issues, I certainly expect such a user to come to the site. We’ve got a lot of wounded veterans out there who (hopefully) will take advantage of what the institution offers.
I hope that helps. I will certainly contact you, and again, thankyou for all you do.
esmi 5:08 pm on January 8, 2013 Permalink
“if we keep the HTML clean, I think we’ve got the blind users covered.”
Yes. If you can go one step further and validate your markup, you’ll cover many of the issues faced by blind users. Also have a look at some of the articles on accessites.org. You should find them helpful in developing a balanced approach to a11y.
Andrew Ozz 8:29 pm on January 8, 2013 Permalink
Thinking so too. Accessibility is an integral part of the UI. However “getting it right” requires several different types of testing and feedback that are quite different from the “standard” UI and graphic design work.
We shouldn’t be making any changes or creating new UI components without them being tested for accessibility. In that terms having the “expert panel of testers” is most important. The next thing would be to encourage users of assistive technology to report bugs and inconsistencies.
Joe Dolson 8:43 pm on January 8, 2013 Permalink
Right now, I’m focused on trying to get the accessibility-ready theme tag up and moving. I’m working on adding the appropriate checks to the theme-check plug-in, so that I can send those over when they’re ready. If anybody would like to help, that would be great.
esmi 8:53 pm on January 8, 2013 Permalink
Anything I can do to help, just holler..
Graham Armfield 9:26 am on January 9, 2013 Permalink
On balance I think that accessibility should kept as a separate group. Although accessibility needs to become part of all the other groups too, having a separate group hopefully can allow us to keep a real cohesive focus.
The challenge, I feel, is to convince enough of the core developers of WordPress to even think about accessibility when they are building the new bits of functionality into the core or updating existing parts. Look at the experience with Theme Customizer – it was just completely impossible to use without a mouse when developed. That was addressed in 3.5 as a result of a trac ticket, but that’s a poor way of ensuring accessibility of WordPress – retrofitting always is difficult and wastes time.
How we get accessibility more mainstream within WordPress?
Maybe by getting as much action going on within this forum as possible – including from people with disabilities/impairments who have not currently contributed. Would that help? Would some kind of WP accessibility mission statement help? I’d like to think so.
Esmi, please can you give me the ability to post new discussions on this forum. Thanks.
Graham
esmi 12:06 pm on January 9, 2013 Permalink
We join as many relevant development, UI and core discussions as we can so that, with each change, we push for any accessibility changes needed and guard against new barriers being introduced. Sure – that may turn us into the proverbial bad pennies is some places but, if we prod people enough times, they may start starting thinking about accessibility before being prompted.
Absolutely! We need feedback, ideas and comments from users with disabilities/impairments. Not technical points but more along the lines of “I use foo software and I find it really difficult/impossible to use bar on my site”. Give us areas that need improvement and we can take them to the people who make the changes. I’d also love to hear from anyone using assistive technology who would be interested in being part of a testing panel. I’m hoping to set up a contact form especially for this purpose shortly.
You now have full access. Sorry about that. I didn’t realise you weren’t in the list of users here.
Cyndy Otty 2:17 pm on January 9, 2013 Permalink
I’m more than happy to help with testing stuff. And this is actually very key because much like everyone has their own computer set up (e.g., operating system, browser, etc.) so too are adaptive tech set ups and they all work differently, have their own issues, etc.
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