IRC Meeting: March 6, 2013

Another small but lively meeting. We also had the opportunity to welcome our newest member, @shaun_10up – a relatively new coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. contributor. I think we’ll be keeping him busy over the next few weeks! 🙂

Custom menus

Thanks to contributions from @lessbloat, @ceo and @quanin, we’re now seeing real, positive, progress on Trac ticket #14045. This greatly increases the chance of WordPress 3.6 being shipped with a more accessible custom menu system. Thank you for all of your hard work on this.

Core Comment Form

There has been a recent spurt of activity in Trac ticket #15080 which is intended to address some accessibilityAccessibility Accessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility) issues in the core comment form output. We’re hoping it can also address some areas of concern regarding the mixture of form controls and plain text in the comment form.

Currently some screen reader users need to make two passes at the form to extract all of the visual information — once in Forms mode and then again using Virtual Cursor (reading) mode. This is due to the fact that, in Forms mode, screen reader software may not render text that is not explicitly associated with a form control via a label tag. @shaun_10up offered to look at the proposed ticket #15080 patch and see if it can be modified to address this problem.

Longer term, we will need volunteers with access to a range of assistive technologyAssistive technology Assistive technology is an umbrella term that includes assistive, adaptive, and rehabilitative devices for people with disabilities and also includes the process used in selecting, locating, and using them. Assistive technology promotes greater independence by enabling people to perform tasks that they were formerly unable to accomplish, or had great difficulty accomplishing, by providing enhancements to, or changing methods of interacting with, the technology needed to accomplish such tasks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assistive_technology solutions to ensure that the new form is not reliant on HTMLHTML HTML is an acronym for Hyper Text Markup Language. It is a markup language that is used in the development of web pages and websites.5 to the point that users of non-HTML5 software could experience problems. If you can help out with user testing, please let us know.

2013 CSUN Conference

The 2013 CSUN Conference was held in San Diego, CA between February 25 to March 2 and was attended by @accessiblejoe and @joedolson who reported phenomenal support for WordPress accessibility, You can catch up via Twitter #csun13.

Dylan Kuhn is looking for accessibility speakers for the Reno WordCamp on April 27-28 in Reno, Nevada, USA. If you are interested, please contact us.

Theme Accessibility Audit

The theme accessibility audit project is moving onto the next phase. Over the next few weeks, @joedolson and @esmi will be working with the Theme Review Team to extend the current Theme Review documentation and devise a practical workflow that incorporates an optional accessibility review.

Documentation

The first draft of the accessibility section for the Theme Developers Handbook is almost complete. Thank you to everyone who has provided feedback so far. Once the draft is complete, it will be presented to the Theme Review Team for their comments and suggestions.

#wordpress-ui log for March 6, 2013.

#comment-form, #irc, #meetup, #menus