Joe Dolson 9:35 pm on December 4, 2018  

Meeting Plans for December 2018

Since December incorporates a large number of holidays, WordCamp US,  and other team member travel, we’re planning on a number of changes to the meeting calendar for the rest of 2018.

We’ll have a meeting on December 7th, during WordCamp US, with no agenda. If anybody has questions on WordPress accessibility, accessibility in WordPress 5.0, or other topics to discuss, please show up and ask! Many regular team members will be in Nashville, but those of us not attending WordCamp US will do our best to answer your questions.

Schedule for December

  • December 7th: Bug Scrub: cancelled, Meeting: Open forum.
  • December 14th: Bug Scrub: cancelled, Meeting: normal. Agenda will be published in advance.
  • December 21st: All meetings cancelled.
  • December 28th: All meetings cancelled.

We’ll return to normally scheduled meetings on January 4th. If there are changes to this schedule, we’ll announce them here!

Jb Audras 9:37 am on December 1, 2018  

Accessibility Team Meeting Notes: November 30, 2018

Meeting transcript on Slack

Accessibility review for the 5.0 About page

Related ticket: #45178.

The About page looks good. The only concern is wether the Classic Editor informations should be shown when the plugin is installed but not activated.

Update on WPCampus Gutenberg accessibility audit

WPCampus is doing a fundraising to support an accessibility audit on Gutenberg. @bamadesigner is coordinating the initiative.

The audit is also supposed to provide actionable data. Most vendors offered to submit issues to Github and talk through the issues. The focus of the audit lies mostly on WCAG 2.0 and 2.1.

The selection committee is finalizing the selection of the vendor. They are in the process of sending follow up questions to the vendors in hopes of deciding late next week, or right after WordCamp US.

Any help and support to show the community how important this is would be nice.

Current progress on Gutenberg accessibility documentation

The document is still available in Google Docs. @abrightclearweb is reviewing the last details.

@chrisvanpatten and @dryanpress from the Docs team are working to implement the document on Gutenberg user documentation, since this guide is valuable for all users. They will ask the Accessibility team to review the Assistive technologies section.

Information about the WordCamp US Contributor Day accessibility team table / the hackathon

@rianrietveld is coordinating the initiative.

Developers from Deque Systems will join the accessibility team and WP core developers at the contributor day. They will work together to set up automated accessibility testing for WordPress.
The plan is to create a framework for testing and example tests for themes first (like Twenty Nineteen) and also generate a list of tests to write.

If there is time the goal is also to set up a framework for Gutenberg and core. @johnbillion and @joemcgill will help out during the contributor day.

Jb Audras 10:25 am on November 30, 2018  

Accessibility team meeting agenda: November 30th

This is the proposed agenda for the accessibility team meeting on November 30, 2018 at 16:00 UTC.

  • Accessibility review for the 5.0 About page
  • Update on WPCampus Gutenberg accessibility audit
  • Current progress on Gutenberg accessibility documentation
  • Information about the WordCamp US Contributor Day accessibility team table / the hackathon
  • Open floor and/or Discussion on a few tickets/issues, time permitting

If you have anything to propose to add to the agenda or specific items related to the above, then please leave a comment below. Either way, everyone is welcome to join!

This meeting is held in the #accessibility channel in the Making WordPress Slack (requires registration).

Rian Rietveld 4:04 pm on November 28, 2018
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Plans for the Hackathon with Deque at the WCUS Contributor day

Deque Systems will join WordPress core developers to set up automated accessibility testing for WordPress, at the contributor day of WordCamp US in Nashville, December 9th.

Today we had a chat on what we will do then and how to set up the Hackathon with:

  • @johnbillion @joemcgill and @rianrietveld from WordPress
  • Caitlin Cashin, Dylan Barrell and Stephen Mathieson from Deque. Dylan and Stephen, both lead developers at Deque, will be at the Hackathon.

We discussed what the most useful will be to work on and decided that targeting accessibility test for themes (specific Twenty Nineteen)  might be a good starting point. Then theme and plugin developers can use this setup/framework to write tests of their own.

We can start creating a framework and write some accessibility test for Twenty Nineteen and generate a list of tests to write. If there is time (and help from the Gutenberg team) set up a framework for Gutenberg and core.

To-do:

  • Ask for a dedicated Slack channel for preparations and discussions  – Rian will ask @pento
  • Ask WordCamp US for a post on their website about the Hackathon – Rian
  • Create a local development setup – Joe/John/Deque
  • Get the testing framework setup – Deque
  • Create a few sample tests – TBD
  • Generate a list of tests – TBD

We can use help from core and Gutenberg developers, so ping us or comment below if you want to join.

#hackathon

Jb Audras 8:55 am on November 24, 2018  

Accessibility Team Meeting Notes: November 23, 2018

Meeting transcript on Slack

Current progress on Gutenberg accessibility / WP 5.0 RC1

WordPress 5.0 RC1 is now available for tests.

The blog post introduced an accessibility related ticket about allowing low privileged users to use ARIA attributes.

Basically these ones are now allowed in the post content:

aria-describedby
aria-details
aria-label
aria-labelledby
aria-hidden

Concerning Gutenberg and WordPress 5.0 timeframe 

The release candidate is out and from there the timeline for release will be determined. Unless it is a blocker, new tickets or issues will be milestoned in 4.6 for Gutenberg plugin and in 5.0.1 for WordPress Core.

Current progress on Gutenberg accessibility documentation

The current document is available in Google Docs.

@abrightclearweb is looking for comments from the accessibility team.

@dryanpress to help moving this document to developers and users docs.

Feedback on the Notice for assistive technologies users to include in WordPress 5.0 About page

The initial ticket was #45270 and the issue was finally addressed in ticket #45178.

The current wording is “Note to users of assistive technology: if you experience usability issues with the block editor, we recommend you continue to use the Classic Editor.” followed by a link to the WP Admin plugin install page (only visible if the user can install plugins).

At this time, there is no confirmation if the Classic Editor plugin is going to be bundled with WordPress 5.0 or not.

WCAG success criteria: should the team refer to WCAG criteria in issues?

Decision: WCAG criteria can be referenced in issues or tickets but they are not mandatory. The accessibility team is not going to make a policy on it.

Update about the WordCamp US Contributor Day accessibility team table / The Hackathon

(related: previous blog post)

People involved in this initiative will get in touch next week with Deque System to organize the hackathon.

Open floor

There’s some inconsistency in the screen-reader-text documentation in the handbook: specifically position: absolute uses !important. It will be removed from the handbook.

@afercia to create a ticket about icon-only controls in WordPress Admin.

Next meeting

Next weekly meeting: November 30, 2018 at 16:00 UTC

Jb Audras 11:29 am on November 23, 2018  

Accessibility team meeting agenda: November 23th

This is the proposed agenda for the accessibility team meeting on November 23, 2018 16:00 UTC.

  • Current progress on Gutenberg accessibility / WP 5.0 RC1
  • Current progress on Gutenberg accessibility documentation
  • Notice for assistive technologies users to include in WordPress 5.0 About page is merged, thoughts and feedback
  • WCAG success criteria: should the team refer to WCAG criteria in issues?
  • Update about the WCUS Contributor Day accessibility team table / The Hackathon
  • Open floor and/or Discussion on a few tickets/issues, time permitting

If you have anything to propose to add to the agenda or specific items related to the above, then please leave a comment below. Either way, everyone is welcome to join!

This meeting is held in the #accessibility channel in the Making WordPress Slack (requires registration).

Jb Audras 9:20 pm on November 20, 2018  

Accessibility Team Meeting Notes: November 16, 2018

Meeting transcript on Slack

Current progress on Gutenberg accessibility

The last weekly Gutenberg accessibility status update was published on November 12, 2018. Short recap:

  • 8 pull request merged
  • 19 open pull request labeled for accessibility
  • 90 remaining accessibility issues
  • 17 open pull Requests and 102 issues.

Help is needed on the remaining accessibility labeled Pull Requests.

Current progress on Gutenberg accessibility documentation

@abrightclearweb is handling Gutenberg Accessibility Documentation and it seems to be on hold.

The current document is available in Google Docs. Discussions about the document can take place on the Accessibility team Slack channel or directly by commenting the document. That’s a great way to contribute, as important as any other.

Feedback from 5.0 accessibility lead about the information message for assistive technologies users

Concerning the related Trac ticket @lonelyvegan mentioned that a shorter sentence would help. The current proposal is going to be something like “Users of assistive technology who experience usability issues with Gutenberg should use the Classic Editor” with a link to the Classic Editor plugin search page.

Please note: this task is now addressed in ticket #45178.

WCUS Contributor Day accessibility team table / The Hackathon

The team recently published a post about the accessibility table during WordCamp US contributor’s day.

The idea is to organize a hackathon to work on including some accessibility automated tests in Core Workflow. Deque System will help, as the editor of Axe-Core. The team is currently looking for core developers and committers to help, and some of them are already involved.

WP Tavern also published a post to promote the initiative. 

Next meeting

Next weekly meeting: November 23, 2018 at 16:00 UTC.

Jb Audras 1:03 pm on November 16, 2018  

Accessibility team meeting agenda: November 16th

This is the proposed agenda for the accessibility team meeting on November 16, 2018 16:00 UTC

  • Current progress on Gutenberg accessibility
  • Current progress on Gutenberg accessibility documentation
  • Feedback from 5.0 accessibility lead about the information message for assistive technologies users (see comments on ticket 45270). 
  • WCUS Contributor Day accessibility team table / The Hackaton
  • Open floor and/or Discussion on a few tickets/issues, time permitting

If you have anything to propose to add to the agenda or specific items related to the above, then please leave a comment below. Either way, everyone is welcome to join!

This meeting is held in the #accessibility channel in the Making WordPress Slack (requires registration).

Jb Audras 10:28 am on November 15, 2018
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Hackathon automated accessibility testing with Deque on the WCUS contributor day

At WordCamp US in Nashville, Deque Systems will join the accessibility team for a hackathon to set up automated accessibility testing for WordPress core, on Sunday, December 9th.

The goal is to include accessibility checks for core, together with the current tests, like Unit and e2e tests and the checks for PHP coding standards we have now.

Deque develops tools like aXe core that can be used for automated testing and they will be sending one or two of their lead developers to work on this with the WordPress core developers.

From the WordPress side we would like to invite core developers to join in and help find solutions to set this up.

Do you know your way around the automated testing system of WordPress core, do you attend the contributor day and do you have time to help?
Please contact the accessibility team in WordPress Slack in the #accessibility channel.

#hackathon

Joe Dolson 9:49 pm on November 12, 2018  

Gutenberg Accessibility Status Update

Gutenberg 4.3 was released today with a number of continuing accessibility adjustments.

Major accessibility changes in Gutenberg 4.3 include:

  1. PR 11466: Add aria-label to images in Gallery block during edit mode/a>: Uses aria-label to communicate the position of the image inthe gallery as well as information about the image. (Furthers the work on Issue 3836, mentioned last week.)
  2. PR 11459: aria-checked only allowed on matching ARIA roles – fixes an issue so that the active block will be announced in the block navigation list.
  3. PR 11607: Alt+F10 should navigate to block toolbar regardless of visibility – Fixes an issue where block toolbar could not be focused by shortcut if it was not already visible.
  4. PR 11543: Return focus to element that opened publish panel – Ensures that focus is not lost after publishing post.
  5. PR 11422: Add multi-block selection announcement. – Read out the number of blocks selected when more than one block is selected.
  6. PR 11403: Constrain tabbing with post publish panel – Completed in-progress feature identified last week.

A few more minor issues have also been addressed:

  1. PR 11560: Improve empty block text – Resolves issues #9076 and #5591 by fixing the text present for empty blocks to a) make it self-consistent and b) clarify how to use the forward slash shortcut to change blocks.
  2. PR 11653: Change aria-label depending on content of paragraph block – Ensure that empty paragraph blocks get instructional text and non-empty blocks get descriptive text.

There are currently 90 open accessibility issues on Gutenberg. (Versus 89 as of last week.)

Pull Requests in Progress

There are currently 19 open pull requests labeled for Accessibility.

Requests 11218 (alt attributes on images in the editor) and 10462 (move block toolbar below block contents) were highlighted as important requests in progress, and are still in progress.