Also, we are getting close to freeze. It’s abou that time in the release cycle when I go through all the tickets and find things I really wish we’d gotten to in this cycle. If there are any developers interested in contributing but not already working working on a team or specific ticket, you could join my hit squad. I’ll find a handful of things I really wish someone would knock out before freeze, that I’ll promise to get committers to review when a patch is posted. If you’re interested in being part of this sprint (starts Friday, goes through freeze in about a week), leave a comment and I’ll ping you when there’s a list of tickets up for grabs.
Of course, ALL tickets are up for grabs, and anyone who wants to contribute to the cycle does not in any way need to wait for me to just jump in and take a stab at something!
Daniel Chatfield 8:17 pm on February 22, 2012 Permalink
Hi Jane,
I’m interested in being in this “hit squad” so ping me when you have a ticket.
Kind Regards,
Daniel
Joachim Kudish 8:18 pm on February 22, 2012 Permalink
I would be interested and available in the next week or so to help out with that!
Mika Epstein (Ipstenu) 8:44 pm on February 22, 2012 Permalink
I’m gonna volunteer too, and hope I don’t have to flake out! Willing to do my best!
trepmal 8:48 pm on February 22, 2012 Permalink
I’m in – been meaning to catch up on trac so this is a good push for me.
Erick Hitter 9:07 pm on February 22, 2012 Permalink
I’m interested.
Konstantin 10:04 pm on February 22, 2012 Permalink
I’d love to contribute!
John P. Bloch 2:10 pm on February 23, 2012 Permalink
I’d be interested in taking any tickets you throw my way.
Xavier 2:56 pm on February 23, 2012 Permalink
I’m not that much of a seasoned coder, but I’m going to try and give #4539 some love this week-end (meaning, try adapting norbertm’s patch to the current codebase).
Graham Armfield 6:56 pm on February 23, 2012 Permalink
Hi Jane,
I’ve been extremely busy just recently so had to drop out for a bit. However I need to ask about accessibility again. I haven’t seen any mention of it so far in the 3.4 lifecycle and there are plenty of parts of the back end that could really do with some serious thought about how they can be made accessible.
If you are intending right at the last minute (as with 3.3) to ask for accessibility comments I will try and help, but I would like to restate that accessibility is not adequately served by tweaks right at the end of a build process. It really does need to be designed in from the start. Perhaps when you guys get round to 3.5 there will be some scope for adding it in to your wishlist.
I have contributed various ideas on http://make.wordpress.org/accessibility/ and other threads but I’ve seen no obvious take-up on these ideas. And I’m happy to share and debate my thoughts with anyone and to help guide people in thinking accessibly.
So I have to ask: “Is it the desire of WordPress devs to make WordPress as accessible as it can be?”
If it is, then can it be included in some kind of masthead or mission statement so that it’s obvious to everyone and so it can be part of our guiding light? There seems to be a definite movement for this within Drupal development now.
If you guys are not interested in making WordPress accessible then please say so and I will happily stop badgering you.
Graham
Jane Wells 7:04 pm on February 23, 2012 Permalink
The answer is yes, BUT. Just like anything else, developing WP depends on developers. That’s people who are willing to write the code for features and improvements, including accessibility. The new base features for 3.4 are not completed yet, as the status reports and weekly dev chats show; about half the teams are behind. There have been a fair number of people making suggestions re accessibility. Unfortunately, these people often don’t agree on what we should be doing, and in 3.3 we took the advice of experts only to have to backpedal. At that point we asked Mel (esmi) ta act as a team lead for the accessibility blog and help filter the suggestions into specific actionable items. So the best thing to do would be to engage with esmi on the accessibility blog with the goal of lobbing action items our way that she’s approved OR to contribute patches with the accessibility fixes you’re proposing straight to core.
When most of the development is done by volunteers, it’s a very different situation than when you control a paid dev team, so expectations need to be adjusted accordingly. I know you’d much prefer that I say, “Yes, I will put several of our best developers right on it!” but since most contributors develop the things they enjoy working on, the challenge is finding people who want to focus on accessibility.
Jesper 7:48 pm on February 23, 2012 Permalink
I’m interested as well.
Thorsten 6:14 pm on February 25, 2012 Permalink
I’m happy to help out if you point me to something you like.
Mike Van Winkle 4:54 pm on February 29, 2012 Permalink
I’m kind of noob when it comes to contributing. But I’ve been looking for an opportunity to try and help, so maybe this is it.