Rian Rietveld 6:55 am on September 30, 2026
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WP A11y docs update September 2026

With:

  • New and updated documentation.
  • MigrationMigration Moving the code, database and media files for a website site from one server to another. Most typically done when changing hosting companies. of 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 Handbook.
  • Our plans for October.
  • The roadmap of the project.

New and updated documentation

In standards and best practice:

Migration of the Accessibility Team Handbook

We are moving the maintenance of the Accessibility Team Handbook over to 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 by the repository owner. https://github.com/ in the repo WordPress/accessibility-team-handbook, @coffee2code is helping. The reason for the migration is that more people can contribute to the content of the handbook when it’s on GitHub.

Our plans for October

We continue to work on getting the issues done in the Tracking issue Content pages: create or review or rewrite, and hopefully get the migration of the Accessibility Team Handbook finished.

The roadmap of the project

As a reminder, this is the roadmap:

  • Phase 1: finish the content of the Knowledge Base, we hope to achieve this soon.
  • Phase 2: Sync the content in the Knowledge Base with a new section in developer.wordpress.org called accessibility.
  • Phase 3: Read through the accessibility information on wordpress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ and decide if content needs to be updated or point to Knowledge Base on developer.wordpress.org. We want to keep one source of truth to avoid duplication and outdated info.
  • Phase 4: Maintenance. WordPress, web techniques, and accessibility change, we want to keep the documentation up-to-date.

Rian explains the roadmap in more detail in the interview with @mbootsman: Rian Rietveld on the Four Phases of the WP Accessibility Project.

#wp-a11y-docs

Krupa Nanda 5:39 am on September 26, 2026
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Accessibility Team Meeting Notes: September 24, 2026

These is 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 alternate Thursday in #accessibility. You can read the full transcript here or see the full meeting schedule.

📣 Announcements

Proposed Agenda

The September 30 deadline for the updated Accessibility Ready program may be delayed slightly while MetaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. completes and tests changes to how the accessibility-ready tag is managed in the Theme Directory.

The updated process will add a second level of verification. A theme author adding accessibility-ready will effectively be applying to the program. Once the theme passes review, an additional approval tag will be added by someone with appropriate Theme Directory access. The theme will only appear in Accessibility Ready listings when both conditions are met.

Before this change can go live:

  • Meta needs to complete and test the implementation.
  • The Accessibility Team needs to provide an initial list of approved themes.
  • More outstanding reviews and requested re-tests should be completed so the initial approved list contains more than the two themes currently approved.

The exact transition date may move beyond September 30. @joedolson will share an update around the deadline once the timeline is coordinated with Meta.

CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. themes need special consideration because they currently do not include the required accessibility.txt file and are only released with WordPress major releases.

The current plan is to review the Core themes against the remaining Accessibility Ready requirements and address issues where possible. Themes meeting the remaining requirements may be grandfathered into the program until accessibility.txtcan be added in a future WordPress release.

@joedolson will create Core tickets for issues identified during the reviews and handle the necessary changes and commits.

Working Group Updates

1. WordPress Core & 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. Editor

Call for contributors: Anyone available to help is encouraged to review the open accessibility related patches and PRs.

A significant development is the work to integrate Axe Core automated accessibility checks into WordPress Core testing.

The current PR introduces Axe Core checks for classic WordPress admin pages and integrates them into 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 by the repository owner. https://github.com/ CI as part of the E2E testing process: https://github.com/WordPress/wordpress-develop/pull/13348

Accessibility violations detected by these checks will cause the test to fail, helping prevent accessibility regressions from being merged. This is an initial implementation that can later be expanded to cover additional admin pages, content states, and user flows.

Initial scans have already identified accessibility violations that are being tracked for fixes.

2. Accessibility-ready Program

The team needs to make a focused push over the next couple of weeks to follow up on outstanding Accessibility Ready reviews, re-test requests, and tickets.

Themes where authors have not followed up or made changes may have the accessibility-ready tag removed. However, themes where authors have responded and requested a re-test should be prioritized so those reviews are completed.

A couple of new re-test requests have also been received and will be added to the review queue. Some recently approved themes may also need additional checks against the updated requirements.

Call for contributors: Help with Accessibility Ready theme testing and re-testing is especially welcome over the coming weeks.

3. Web Accessibility Documentation

Work continues on identifying and completing remaining Knowledge Base documentation: https://github.com/wpaccessibility/wp-a11y-docs/issues/85

New and updated Knowledge Base content continues to be published, with writing and reviews ongoing.

The Accessibility Team Handbook is also being moved to the WordPress/accessibility-team-handbook GitHub repository. This will make it easier for more contributors to participate in maintaining and improving the handbook.

There are currently no blockers for the documentation work.

Open floor

No additional items were raised during the open floor.

Thanks to everyone who joined the meeting and contributed to the discussion, and special thanks to @joedolson, @rianrietveld, and @afercia for sharing the detailed updates.

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

#accessibility, #meeting-notes

Krupa Nanda 6:33 am on September 23, 2026
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Accessibility Team Meeting Agenda: September 24, 2026

This is the proposed agenda for the bi-weekly 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 on Thursday, September 24, 2026 15:00 UTC

📣 Announcements

Proposed Agenda

  • Accessibility Ready deadline is coming up. 🎉

Working groups

  • WordPress CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. and 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. Editor
  • Accessibility-ready Program
  • Documentation about Web Accessibility

Open floor

If you want to have a topic added to the agenda, please mention it in the comments of this post.

The Accessibility Team bug scrub is every Tuesday at 16:00 UTC, held in the #accessibility channel on the Make WordPress SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/ (registration required).

#accessibility, #agenda

Krupa Nanda 6:24 am on September 23, 2026
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X-post: Call for testing: DataForm editor inspector

X-comment from +make.wordpress.org/core: Comment on Call for testing: DataForm editor inspector

Krupa Nanda 8:38 am on September 16, 2026
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Accessibility Team Meeting Notes: September 10, 2026

These is 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 alternate Thursday in #accessibility. You can read the full transcript here or see the full meeting schedule.

 📣 Announcements

Proposed agenda: wp.a11y.speak() announcement guidance

  • Discussed creating clearer guidance for when to use polite vs. assertive announcements.
  • Suggested considerations include:
    • Importance of the information
    • Whether the user needs it to continue or it may change their next action
    • Direct vs. indirect actions and confirming vs. explaining reactions
    • Whether the information is available in nearby text or is temporary/remote in the DOM
    • Context such as long descriptions, delays, or compound changes
  • The team agreed that a decision tree/rubric could be useful.
  • @joedolson will turn the existing document into guidance for further discussion, potentially for the knowledge base and wp.a11y.speak() package documentation.

Working Group Updates

1. WordPress CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. & 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. Editor

  • The 7.2 milestone ticket scrub is complete for now; future bug scrubs will focus on progress.
  • Block Editor priorities for 7.2 are still becoming clearer.
  • Notes and Visual RevisionsRevisions The WordPress revisions system stores a record of each saved draft or published update. The revision system allows you to see what changes were made in each revision by dragging a slider (or using the Next/Previous buttons). The display indicates what has changed in each revision. remain active areas.
  • Notes currently contains several complex information relationships, with a recent improvement moving from a tree grid to a list, simplifying screen reader announcements.
  • Editor 7.2 task board: https://github.com/orgs/WordPress/projects/300

2. Accessibility-ready Program

  • A new MetaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. TracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. ticket, #8427, proposes changes to how the accessibility-ready tag is moderated in the Theme Directory.
  • The proposed change would prevent the tag from appearing until it has been approved by the Accessibility Team.
  • Testing of existing accessibility-ready themes is continuing.
  • The team also needs support with theme testing and administrative/data management.

3. Web Accessibility Documentation

  • Work continues on the remaining items tracked 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 by the repository owner. https://github.com/ issue #85.
  • Published: Tables in the content
  • In review:
    • Color contrast of text against its background
    • Tables in frontend development
  • More reviewers are needed to help move reviews forward.

Contributor Support

  • Cheyne Klein’s team offered to help with recurring/bottleneck work and potential WP Credits student projects.
  • The team identified opportunities in:
    • Reviewing documentation
    • Accessibility-ready theme testing
    • Administrative management of the theme review process
    • Keeping theme status/data up to date
  • @joedolson and @rianrietveld will help guide contributors. The existing testing documentation and tracking spreadsheet can be used as starting points.
  • Velda will connect with Joe and Rian to learn the process and explore documenting it for broader contributor participation.

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

Props to @joedolson and @rianrietveld for providing updates around the working groups!

#accessibility, #meeting-notes

Joe Dolson 7:56 pm on September 9, 2026
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Planning for the Accessibility Lab Plugin

The Accessibility Lab plugin was announced on August 21st, and now that WordPress 7.1 is wrapped up, it’s time to start scoping out the first features to target for release.

For an initial discussion, we’ll meet on Thursday, September 17, 2026 15:00 UTC in the #accessibility channel on SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. This is the same time as the bi-weekly 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.

The discussion has three initial goals:

  1. Brainstorm the features we want to develop.
  2. Decide which features should be prioritized to prepare for an initial release.
  3. For each goal, establish what we aim to learn by shipping the feature in the pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party., and how we can measure success.

Since the original announcement, the plugin has been moved to the WordPress Github repository.

If you are unable to attend the meeting, your brainstorming ideas and priorities can be shared either in a comment on this post or as a new issue in the plugin repository.

Remember that the goal for this plugin is to provide a mechanism for exploration and experimentation, and not a place to fix common accessibility problems. If you don’t have a clear answer to how a problem might be solved, that is very possibly exactly the type of issue we want to explore!

Reviewed by @aduth, @areziaal

Krupa Nanda 12:32 pm on September 9, 2026
Tags: ,   

Accessibility Team Meeting Agenda: September 10, 2026

This is the proposed agenda for the bi-weekly 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 on Thursday, September 10, 2026 15:00 UTC

📣 Announcements

Proposed Agenda

  • Guidelines for assertive vs. polite wp.a11y.speak() announcements. Discuss when each announcement type should be used and whether we can establish explicit guidelines.

Working groups

  • WordPress CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. and 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. Editor
  • Accessibility-ready Program
  • Documentation about Web Accessibility

Open floor

If you want to have a topic added to the agenda, please mention it in the comments of this post.

The Accessibility Team bug scrub is every Tuesday at 16:00 UTC, held in the #accessibility channel on the Make WordPress SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/ (registration required).

#agenda, #meeting-notes

Krupa Nanda 9:39 am on September 1, 2026
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Accessibility Team Meeting Notes: Aug 27, 2026

These is 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 alternate Thursday in #accessibility. You can read the full transcript here or see the full meeting schedule.

📣 Announcements

Accessibility Labs PluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party.

  • Discussed setting up separate planning meetings for the Accessibility Labs plugin to focus on its direction, implementation, and initial groundwork.
  • Agreed that the regular bi-weekly team chat should remain focused on team updates, while the Labs discussion can happen during alternate weeks as a separate meeting.
  • The first meeting will help determine the scope and frequency of future discussions; meeting every two weeks may not be necessary.
  • Participants were asked to share their availability for the first async planning meeting. Initial participants tagged: troychaplin, williampatton, aduth, ,@annezazu and others who would like to be involved.

WordPress CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. & 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. Editor

  • WordPress 7.1 was released last week, and planning is now underway for 7.1.1 and 7.2.
  • Several items are already milestoned for 7.2, with planning progressing.

Accessibility-Ready Program

Documentation about Web Accessibility

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

Props to @joedolson and @rianrietveld for providing updates around the working groups!

#accessibility, #meeting-notes

Rian Rietveld 9:17 am on August 31, 2026
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WP A11y docs update August 2026

With:

  • new and updated documentation,
  • an explanation of 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)-ready program,
  • a complete sitemap for users,
  • our plans for September.

New and updated documentation

Standards and best practice section:

For the accessibility-ready program section:

  • New page What is the accessibility-ready program, because there was some dicussion about its meaning and purpose.
  • Updated the language for plugin recommendations for clarification.
  • Cross-linked all the resources with the accessibility-ready requirements, and we made the setup of the resources uniform. Now the testers can quickly find related documentation in the Knowledge Base.

And we now have a Sitemap for users, with links to all the documentation and topics in the WP Accessibility Knowledge Base.

Plans for September 2026

Move the Accessibility Team Handbook to a 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 by the repository owner. https://github.com/ repository on the WordPress GitHub organisation.

Work on the remaining open issues in the tracking issue Content pages: create or review or rewrite.

And we will add to the topic Infinite scroll, the ways to disable this in the Media Library grid view for WP 7.1. In short, there are 2 ways:

  • In your user profile (Users > Profile > Your name), check the option “Disable infinite scrolling in the Media Library grid view”. Then, a message “Load more” appears in the Medial Library grid view to manually load more images.
  • Or view the images in “list view” instead of “grid view”. The list view option has pagination.

#accessibility-ready, #wp-a11y-docs

Krupa Nanda 8:38 am on August 26, 2026
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Accessibility Team Meeting Agenda: August 27, 2026

This is the proposed agenda for the bi-weekly 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 on Thursday, August 27, 2026 15:00 UTC

📣 Announcements

Working groups

  • WordPress CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. and 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. Editor
  • Accessibility-ready Program
  • Documentation about Web Accessibility

Open floor

If you want to have a topic added to the agenda, please mention it in the comments of this post.

The Accessibility Team bug scrub is every Tuesday at 16:00 UTC, held in the #accessibility channel on the Make WordPress SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/ (registration required).

#accessibility, #agenda