These are the bi-weekly notes for the 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) Team meeting that happens on Fridays. You can read the full transcript here or see the full meeting schedule. My apologies for the delay and combined meeting notes. Thanks in advance for your understanding.

Updates from the working groups

Only groups that provided updates are shown below.

Team Updates

Documentation:

• Joe Dolson published the current progress page on Make that he mentioned last week. Also updated a couple of broken links in the handbook, reported by @afercia.

General:

• @joedolson shared that WordPress 6.5 is about to release; the accessibility improvements doc is expected to publish very soon. Given such a short release, we accomplished quite a lot.
• He’s focusing on trying to finish up a group of accessibility tasks the team started 5-7 years ago, mostly findable in track using the a11yAccessibility 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)-task keyword, all of which have had work done, but not finished.
• Also, he’s considering discontinuing the bug scrub that precedes this meeting. Attendance and participation has been very low. What I need is for other people to step up and actually work on tickets; without that, the bug scrub is pointless.
• Final thoughts: The accessibility bugs on coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. haven’t shifted much in the last few years. Same issues, just slowly working through them. There isn’t a lot to talk about there, they just need work. The accessibility issues in GithubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/, on the other hand, are constantly changing at a rapid pace. We should probably focus any scrub time completely on Github. However, he would personally like to focus his time on polishing off the core issues. If somebody else would step up and run Github focused scrubs, Joe would participate. Because Joe’s following tracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. so much, he’s not sufficiently on top of GutenbergGutenberg The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/ dev.

Gutenberg:

• @annezazu shared this update: Anne was offline so she has nothing to report from the Gutenberg team so Themes is up next.
• @travel_girl commented: On her ToDoList is currently the a11y ready tag for the themes. Especially the workflow, the concrete testing steps (aka onbaording) and that in the past not every theme got actually tested. But thats quite a big field and Anne thinks she’ll have to start with small steps for a good communication. Joe commented that the workflow needs improvement and he’s happy to help if @travel_girl has any specific needs.

Media

• We’re working on scheduling a conversation to discuss plans for the phase 3 media library; that’s a primary focus right now. Trying to bring all the stakeholders together to have a productive conversation that can set some goals & at least a window into a time frame. Maja will draft out some to do list about themes. She was talking with Tammi at WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. Germany and got some good hints and ideas.

Meta:

• @ndiego dropped a significant post on redesign efforts in #website-redesign.

Agenda Items and Open Floor for Discussion:

• Joe Dolson asks if Establishing Accessibility Allies is ready for publishing and if there are any last comments. If ok, he proposes doing so shortly after 6.5 releases as a time to publish.
• Discuss ways we can work on Requesting VPAT/ACR Documentation for WordPress – As a team, we would have to invest a lot of time in this. Without funding explicitly for this task, I’m not sure it’s something we can take on, but I think we should publish something about it – at the least, a “why we don’t have one, and what it would take to get one.” @elblakeo31 suggested pinging @chanthaboune on the VPAT/ACR talk. I don’t think there’s a legal need, yet. He did connect her with folks from the Office for Civil Rights who can help guide that discussion. Joe responded: The statement would be mostly about what is needed to prepare a VPAT. E.g., what decisions need to be made (e.g., what version would we prepare a VPAT for? How often would it be updated?). It would take more than one release cycle to get it done, so it would always be out of date; it’s just a decision how out of date is acceptable.
• @elblakeo31 shared an update from our previous discussion on sponsoring a massive amount of WP accessibility work. Here are Blake’s full update details.

Accessibility Team Meeting Notes: October 20, 2023

Updates from the working groups

Only groups that provided updates are shown below.

Team Updates

Documentation:

• Joe’s working on a document to publish on the Make site that gives an overview of accessibility focuses in the current release. The primary goal is to be a useful reference for contributor days or new contributors to know what the current priorities and status is. We have a page sort of like that already, under “Get Involved”, but this is intended to focus on the current release, rather than the overall picture. I’ll be re-writing the Get Involved pages, as well, so that those are a better representation. He also shared:
• We’re now well into RCRelease Candidate A beta version of software with the potential to be a final product, which is ready to release unless significant bugs emerge. phase for WordPress 6.4, so keep your eye out for any regressions or bugs in things added during 6.4, since that’s the only thing we can fix right now. *Today’s bug scrub focused on the early planning for 6.5, and trying to tackle some of the major accessibility tasks that have already been worked on, but may or may not be complete.
• We have a number of large tracking tickets – reviewed in today’s bug scrub – that need some documentation work to identify whether or not we’ve actually finished that work. In most cases, we probably have not finished them, but the lift to finish is probably relatively small. The biggest challenge is finding the remaining instances.

Gutenberg

• @annezazu wanted to flag this issue: Consistent handling of aria-describedby along with broader work continuing in the Data Views work with this recent PR DataViews: Add Grid Layout. Finally, since the Font Library was removed from 6.4, I hope we can use that as an opportunity to have it in top shape for 6.5. Please continue to help test and open issues there. Joe commented: One of the best things about punting something late is that we have something almost complete that can be thoroughly tested, which is a rare opportunity. So yes, do a lot of testing in the font library.

Media

• Media is focusing on trying to highlight our long term goals that are poor candidates for the current media library but great candidates for the Phase 3 media library redesign.
• We’re tracking those using the keyword phase-3-media-triage. We’re hoping that with a major redesign like this, we can use the opportunity to make some major under the hood changes that can solve a lot of problems.

Open Floor

• @elblakeo31 gives an update on Leadership behind accessibility. Read the full discussion for complete details.

Accessibility Team Meeting Notes: October 6, 2023

Updates from the working groups

Only groups that provided updates are shown below.

Team Updates

General:

• We’re heading in on the final betaBeta A pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process. for WordPress 6.4. There are only 2 remaining accessibility issues to close; I’m hoping to finish those off this weekend. One of them is, as of yet, unreproduced, so it’s likely to be either punted or closed. If anybody can take the time to try and reproduce this, please do.
• Joe also closed 14 core issues so far in 6.4.

Gutegerg:

• @annezazu shared this update for the Gutenberg team: Specifically want to flag this upcoming more working group style hallway hangout. And I want to call out this PR: “This PR refactors how the blockBlock Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. toolbar structure works to be more like a classic word editor where alt + f10 moves you to all of the block tools. An escape keypress would bring you back to where you were in the editor.”
• Joe also discussed this in the bug scrub today, and it’s ready for serious testing now. It should look and work identically to the current implementation for sighted/mouse users, but introduces some new interaction models for keyboard/screen reader.
• From @jeryj: “For keyboard interactions, Tab and Shift + Tab to navigate from block to toolbar have been removed. Now only alt+F10 to reach the toolbar and Escape to return to the block. The block tools should be within the HeaderHeader The header of your site is typically the first thing people will experience. The masthead or header art located across the top of your page is part of the look and feel of your website. It can influence a visitor’s opinion about your content and you/ your organization’s brand. It may also look different on different screen sizes. all times, allowing for Tab to navigate you between Document Tools, Save button, etc. I’m curious for feedback on the Escape keypress. I feel like it would be useful to be able to press Escape from anywhere in the header and return to your active block. Even from the sidebarSidebar A sidebar in WordPress is referred to a widget-ready area used by WordPress themes to display information that is not a part of the main content. It is not always a vertical column on the side. It can be a horizontal rectangle below or above the content area, footer, header, or any where in the theme. too. Just a global of “Return me to the block canvas focus,” but maybe that’s casting too wide of a net. Right now the Escape will only return you to the block if you’re on the block tools.” Jeryj mentioned that It can be tested by going to http://gutenberg.run/ and entering the PR#: 54513.

Media:

• A few accessibility issues resolved in media, but it’s been mostly quiet. This is probably in part because of the unclear information about the future of the media library and how or when that might get integration with the editor. Most of the remaining media library accessibility issues are large, complicated problems that would be major investments in time and effort, so they are hard to prioritize with this outstanding ambiguity. So I’m likely to focus mostly on trying to establish media accessibility policies to help identify the paths we want to take forward. E.g., what in a media library will help to optimize our ability to support accessibility.

Themes:

• @poena shared this update from the Themes team: I have made one accessibility-ready review of Twenty Twenty-Four and it does not pass the requirements yet. There are still problems with missing headings and missing landmarks. The theme style variations have problems with color contrast and needs further testing.
• Open accessibility issues: Joe asked whether @poena opened issues following that review. Technically, theme style variations are not required to pass contrast, but it would be great if they did. And she added them as a comment on an existing issue.

Meta:

• Joe shared that the redesign project is still ongoing, but I don’t think I’ve seen anything new in the last couple weeks. But they’ll pingPing The act of sending a very small amount of data to an end point. Ping is used in computer science to illicit a response from a target server to test it’s connection. Ping is also a term used by Slack users to @ someone or send them a direct message (DM). Users might say something along the lines of “Ping me when the meeting starts.” us as things are ready. The showcase filters could probably stand a re-review.

NOTE: If you’d like to have a topic added to the agenda for our next meeting, please mention it in the comments of upcoming agenda.