Enrique Sánchez 6:32 pm on January 17, 2020
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Accessibility Team meeting notes for January 17, 2020

These are the 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 on our Slack channel and find the meeting’s agenda here.

Summary of the second WordPress Accessibility Day planning meeting

Earlier this the week we had our second planning meeting. Planning is well underway and the team has reached out to outside sources for help in order to make some key decisions.

The proposed dates for the next meeting have been posted in the #accessibility-events channel in 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/..

Dates for the upcoming 5.4 bug scrubs

In addition to our weekly bug scrub that happens every Friday at 15:00 UTC, we will be facilitating an addition bug scrub meeting on Tuesdays at 17:00 UTC, to address all TracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. tickets and GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can 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/ issues for the 5.4 releaseRelease A release is the distribution of the final version of an application. A software release may be either public or private and generally constitutes the initial or new generation of a new or upgraded application. A release is preceded by the distribution of alpha and then beta versions of the software..

Continue conversation on 5.5 focuses

As previously discussed, the team would like to start planning and working on our focuses for the 5.5 release. It’s been suggested we start work an accessible color schemes for wp-admin and start looking at the Full-site editing work that is ongoing in the Gutenberg repository in GitHub.

#meeting-notes

Enrique Sánchez 10:00 pm on January 16, 2020
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Accessibility Team Meeting Agenda: January 17, 2020

This is the proposed agenda for the 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 Friday, 17 January 2020 at 16:00 UTC.

  • Summary of the second WordPress Accessibility Day planning meeting.
  • Dates for the upcoming 5.4 bug scrubs.
  • Continue conversation on 5.5 focuses.

If you have any additional topics to propose, please comment below.

The Accessibility bug scrub will be held on Friday, 17 January 2020 at 15:00 UTC.

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

#agenda

Joe Dolson 12:09 am on January 16, 2020
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WP Accessibility Day: planning meeting 2

WP 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) Day planning continued on Tuesday, 14 January, 2020

Slack transcript

Design: Site, logo, hosting, etc.

@nrqsnchz volunteered to pair with somebody on design.

@ryokuhi verified that Global WordPress Translation Day was hosted by Siteground; @jbaudras will check with WP Translation day organizing team about how that was set up.

@joedolson checked domain options, @audrasjb will also check with WP Translation day team about securing the domain.

Still need additional volunteers to work on design. Would like a team of at least three people to plan architecture, build, and design.

Event Content

@joedolson proposed using a model similar to ID24 (inclusive design 24); 24 hours, one talk per hour. Content will be selected from open submissions world-wide. Essentially a single-track, single-topic 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. running virtually for 24 hours.

Talks would probably be 30-40 minutes. Have live emcees who can chat with and do mini-interviews with speakers, handle q & a.

Use members of organizing team or 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) team to handle emcee duties.

Speaker Selection

@vicent, @ryokuhi, @joedolson, and @bdeconinck volunteered to help with speaker selection. Further volunteers are welcome!

Local event coordination

We’ll want to list local events that are associated with WP Accessibility Day, such as viewing events or other related events.

  • Need to be able to provide information to organizers setting up events on accessible event spaces
  • Need to list accessibility features of events on site (e.g., live signing, audio enhancement, description services, etc.)
  • Should have minimum requirements for events re: accessibility of event space.

Briefly discussed live translation services & post-event internationalization of content, but tabled the conversation as out-of-scope.

Next meeting:

Dates are proposed in the #accessibility-events 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/. channel; please vote on options.

Enrique Sánchez 11:19 pm on January 10, 2020
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Accessibility Team meeting notes for 10 January 2020

These are the 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 on our Slack channel and find the meeting’s agenda here.

Update on the next WordPress Accessibility Day planning meeting

The next WPAD meeting will be held on Tuesday, January 14, 2020, 16:00 UTC on the #accesibilty-events channel in the Make WordPress Slack (account required). Read this post for a summary of the kickoff meeting that took place on Tuesday, December 17th 2019.

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. Asia 2020 accessibility contributor table

At least one member of the accessibility team is planning on attending WordCamp Asia 2020 next month, this means we’ll be able to host an accessibility contributor table.

Action plan for the 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/ focus research work

We need feedback on the observations gathered from the research and testing the accessibility team did on the various focus handling flows in Gutenberg blocks.

The team wants to validate these observations before moving on to creating issues on the Gutenberg repository on GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can 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/.

Focuses for 5.4 and 5.5

The team agreed to have additional bug scrubs to address tickets and issues for the 5.4 releaseRelease A release is the distribution of the final version of an application. A software release may be either public or private and generally constitutes the initial or new generation of a new or upgraded application. A release is preceded by the distribution of alpha and then beta versions of the software.. More information on when these bug scrubs will happen will be shared as soon as possible.

For 5.5, the team would like to work on a bigger project, such as the idea of developing accessible color schemes for wp-admin.

Open Floor

Help is needed providing more information and media references on Joseph Karr O’Connor Wikipedia page. Joseph passed away last week. He was a former team representative and an outstanding member of the web accessibility community.

#meeting-notes

Joe Dolson 2:06 am on January 10, 2020  

Goodbye, Joseph Karr O’Connor

Joseph Karr O’Connor, also known to the WordPress community as @AccessibleJoe, passed away peacefully on Friday, January 3rd, 2020.

Joe made his first post here on September 5th, 2013, when he became 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 representative, taking over from Mel Pedley, who stepped away from WordPress at that time.

I was first introduced to Joe in late 2012. We were working on parallel but separate projects – he was promoting the plan to develop a collection of accessible WordPress themes, called the Cities project, while I was working with Mel Pedley and the Theme Review team to define the collection of guidelines that formed the seed of today’s accessibility-ready program for WordPress themes.

Joe was an amazing people person – gentle and kind, and always able to be calm in the face of difficult conversations.

The WordPress Accessibility Team would not be what it is today without Joe’s leadership and patience, although his health forced him to step down from his leadership role in late 2015, and reduce his role further after continuing health issues in 2016.

Thank you to Joe, and all our best wishes to his wife Linda and his daughter Siobhan. We hope that they know that Joe will always hold a place in our hearts and in the history of WordPress.

Joe has requested that gifts in his honor be made to The Aurelia Foundation, which provides community-based day programs to people with developmental disabilities, including his beloved daughter.

Enrique Sánchez 9:15 pm on January 9, 2020
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Accessibility Team Meeting Agenda: January 10, 2020

This is the proposed agenda for the 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 Friday, 10 January 2020 at 16:00 UTC.

  • Update on the WordPress Accessibility Day meeting.
  • 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. Asia 2020 contributor table.
  • Action plan for the 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/ focus research work.
  • Focuses for 5.4 and 5.5.

If you have any additional topics to propose, please comment below.

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

#agenda

Jb Audras 5:41 pm on January 3, 2020  

Accessibility Team Meeting Notes: 3 January 2020

Meeting transcript on Slack

Update on the WordPress 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) Day

The project kickoff meeting took place on Tuesday, December 17th. The meeting summary is available.

Proposed date for the next WordPress Accessibility Day meeting is Tuesday 14 January 2020 at 16:00 UTC in the #accessibility-events 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/. channel. If you would like to propose another meeting date, please comment in the meeting summary post.

Update on the 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/ focus handling research work

Last month, the accessibility team made some testing on how Gutenberg handles focus on the various blocks. Thanks @enrique, @markdubois, @vicent, @gziolo, @audrasjb and @joedolson for their contribution.

@joedolson completed the focus handling tests & written up observations on it in a document.

Next steps:

  • Publish the summary on Make/Accessibility
  • Open related issues on Gutenberg GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can 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/ repository

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. Asia – contributor dayContributor Day Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/ https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/.

WordCamp Asia will host a contributor day and plan to set up an Accessibility table. All accessibility team members who plan to attend the WordCamp are welcome to volunteer to lead the table. Please comment below if you are interested.

Accessibility team goals for WordPress 5.4

@audrasjb: It would be great to define a primary focus for the team, for the next major releaseMajor Release A set of releases or versions having the same major version number may be collectively referred to as “X.Y” -- for example version 5.2.x to refer to versions 5.2, 5.2.1, and all other versions in the 5.2. (five dot two dot) branch of that software. Major Releases often are the introduction of new major features and functionality., WordPress 5.4. It’s not mandatory to have a main focus, but with 5.3 the primary goal of the team was the Admin CSSCSS CSS is an acronym for cascading style sheets. This is what controls the design or look and feel of a site. changes and it was quite effective.

@sabernhardt added one goal would be fixing more issues from the Gutenberg audit (maybe not primary focus though).

@nataliemac asked if it’s possible for accessible color schemes to be a focus for 5.4.

Accessible color schemes is a very nice project but it will probably have to wait for 5.5 in August, as 5.4 development must to be almost completed in 4 week. The idea is to plan major goals for 5.5 in the next few weeks and to focus on smaller tasks (TracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. tickets and Gutenberg issues) for 5.4.

This Trac report can be used to pick up small focuses for 5.4. On Gutenberg side, that would be nice to address a couple of issues from the audit.

Jb Audras 7:45 pm on January 2, 2020  

Accessibility Team Meeting Agenda: January 3, 2020

This is the proposed agenda for the 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 Friday 3 January 2020 at 16:00 UTC.

  • Team updates
  • Accessibility team goals for WordPress 5.4:
    • Primary focus for this releaseRelease A release is the distribution of the final version of an application. A software release may be either public or private and generally constitutes the initial or new generation of a new or upgraded application. A release is preceded by the distribution of alpha and then beta versions of the software.
    • CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. / TracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. tickets
    • 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/ / GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can 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/ issues
  • Open floor

If you have any additional topics to propose, please comment below.

The Accessibility bug scrub will be held on Friday 3 January 2020 at 15:00 UTC.

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

Joe Dolson 5:26 pm on December 19, 2019
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WordPress Accessibility Day: kickoff meeting notes

Slack transcript of the meeting

The initial planning meeting for the proposed WordPress 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) event occurred on Tuesday, December 17th at 16:00 UTC in the #accessibility-events 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/. channel.

Goals of the Event

What do we hope to achieve with this event?

  • Build awareness in the WordPress community around accessibility
  • Develop the accessibility knowledge of the members of the WordPress community

Outcomes

  • Things to measure: participants, number of live events, participation follow-up behaviors
  • Can we set practical numeric goals with no prior comparison? Perhaps specific goal setting is a thing for a repeat WPA11y Day.
  • Consider possible goal targets as we develop the event further.

Logistics

We made the decision to plan a 24 hour event, world-wide. Currently planning is targeted towards a date in late September, to avoid collisions with major WordPress releases, WordCamps Asia, EU, and US, and to also try and avoid the probable date for ID24.

A secondary goal is to prepare a mini-event to promote this as part of Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) 2020.

Naming

The official name of the event will be ‘WordPress Accessibility Day’.

The next meeting is tentatively proposed for Tuesday January 14th 2020 at 16:00 UTC. In the next meeting we’ll further examine the logistics, refine the timeline, and begin to discuss content.

Enrique Sánchez 7:26 pm on December 13, 2019
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Accessibility Team meeting notes for 13 December 2019

These are the 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 on our Slack channel and find the meeting’s agenda here.

Meeting plans for remainder of December 2019

The team agreed to take a break from meetings and bug scrubs for the remainder of December 2019 and a such, today was our last meeting and bug scrub of the year.

The team was also reminded of the WordPress Global Accessibility Day initial planning meeting, which will be held on Tuesday 17 December 2019 at 16:00 UTC in the #accessibility-events 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/. channel.

Easier testing 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/ PRs with gutenberg.run

http://gutenberg.run is a service by @aduth that provides temporary live preview sites for Gutenberg pull requests.

This will allow us to view and test Gutenberg PRs without the need to have a local development environment set up and running. Testing and providing feedback should be much easier for a lot of us.

It’s important to note that http://gutenberg.run is a work in progress, and as such some bugs can happen. The project is open sourceOpen Source Open Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL., so if you want to report bugs or follow along on its development, you can do so in the project’s GitHub repository.

Status and follow up plans for the Accessibility Audit project board on GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can 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/

The team was reminded of the Gutenberg Accessibility Audit project board on GitHub which was created after the WP Campus accessibility audit that was performed earlier this year.

We noticed how 60 issues have already been closed, 8 are in progress and 27 are still in the To do list.

Now that gutenberg.run is available, we hope that the team can provide the necessary testing and feedback and make some progress on these issues.

Updates on the team’s current projects

@joedolson updated the team on the progress that has been made on the research work of focus handling in Gutenberg blocks we started recently.

Joe noted that now that most of the initial research has been done, some patterns are starting to emerge and we’ve been able to identify predominant behaviors and oddities.

Joe will collate the list and ask follow-up questions to some of the testers for clarification. We’ll add screen-reader testing to the research so we can identify how each scenario is announced.

We also revisited the idea that came up recently of adding accessible color schemes to wp-admin. Now that we have access to the GitHub and SVNSVN Apache Subversion (often abbreviated SVN, after its command name svn) is a software versioning and revision control system. Software developers use Subversion to maintain current and historical versions of files such as source code, web pages, and documentation. Its goal is to be a mostly compatible successor to the widely used Concurrent Versions System (CVS). WordPress core and the wordpress.org released code are all centrally managed through SVN. https://subversion.apache.org/. 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 repositories we are in a position to make progress.

The team agreed to come back to this project next year after the break.

Open Floor

On the topic of accessible color schemes, @steelwagstaff shared some previous accessible color scheme work done for PressBooks that should be useful to the team.

#meeting-notes