esmi 12:05 pm on February 14, 2013
Tags: core ( 14 ), irc ( 11 ), meetup ( 18 ), testing ( 17 )

IRC Meeting Summary: 13 Feb 2013

As per last week, we had a very lively and interesting meeting with the main focus being Custom Menus (again) and the use of hidden skip links. Thanks to all who took part — especially a couple of UIUI UI is an acronym for User Interface - the layout of the page the user interacts with. Think ‘how are they doing that’ and less about what they are doing. team members. The inter-team discussion is invaluable as it allows us to get a better perspective on the overall coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. development philosophies as well as the current development cycle goals. I think the more we learn about the development process, the more effective we can become at offering practical, effective, suggestions at the right times.

User Testing

@accessiblejoe will be looking at developing videod user tests for the CSUN conference based on the list provided by @GrahamArmfield and the alter discussion on IRC:

Logon and interpret dashboard and toolbar
Publish new post including use of headings, bold etc. Add categories and tags.
Edit post to add media (image or pdf) with caption, alt text etc.
Update user options including setting new password
Use Theme CustomizerCustomizer Tool built into WordPress core that hooks into most modern themes. You can use it to preview and modify many of your site’s appearance settings. to change Site Title and background colours etc.
Creation of a simple custom menu; re-ordering of menu items including a single item sub-menu.
Logging out of WordPress.

We hope that any videos obtained will help the core development teams to gain a better understanding of some of the issues faced by disabled users.

Front-end 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)

@joedolson is still working on an extension of the Theme Check 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 as part of the optional accessibility audit for all themes submitted to 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/. He now has a modified version of the plugin available for testing and is actively looking for feedback.

There was also a lively discussion of “hidden” links — including both skip links and the current log out link (which is effectively hidden in a dropdown) — and balancing link visibility with the need to avoid a cluttered interface.

Finally, a reminder to all readers that, as a group, we are still stretched pretty thin and would welcome new members — both technical developers and non-technical disabled authors.

#wordpress-ui log for February 13 2013

#core-2, #irc, #meetup, #testing

ceo 12:34 pm on February 14, 2013

Catching up on the chat after I left. I really like the idea of the visible Logout. Glad to see this brought up.

And, in my experience, most of the screen reader users I know use Facebook and Twitter either via the mobile sites or apps because of the inaccessibility. I don’t really frequent many other social networks so can’t comment on them.
- tady 5:03 pm on February 14, 2013
  
  This is one that caught my eye too. I wondered about the possibility of integrating an icon font? (An example would be: http://fontello.com/ ) Would this be more beneficial? In this case, the under “Font Awesome” there’s a pretty decent icon to logout. Couple this with an anchor title and it could be small/discreet enough to go alongside the “Howdy, username [GravatarGravatar Is an acronym for Globally Recognized Avatar. It is the avatar system managed by WordPress.com, and used within the WordPress software. https://gravatar.com/.]” easily. I would envisage a (slow) update of all icons across the dashboard to an icon typeface over time, which would result in this being second nature or intuitive.
  
  As many of these font icons are actually unique entities (i.e. it’s not like the logout symbol replaces the letter “L”), maybe this is creating an element of greater confusion? Perhaps an image with a proper alt/title would be more effective?
  - GrahamArmfield 12:31 pm on February 15, 2013
    
    A small problem with using icons alone is that speech recognition users can sometimes find it difficult to action the link. Those users can usually access image links if they know what the alternate text is, but of course that is not always obvious.
    
    That said, in this case the alternate text would be very likely to be “log out” or “log off”.
    
    Speech recognition users do have other ways of activating links but they can get laborious.
    
    With icons there could also be the issue that they are not obvious enough for some users – maybe with cognitive impairments.
    - esmi 1:02 pm on February 15, 2013
      
      A small problem with using icons alone is that speech recognition users can sometimes find it difficult to action the link.
      
      As an ex-VR user (try coding in Dragon for 6 months — it’s… interesting), I’m in two minds about this.
      
      Using Dragon as an example, if it is used with IE, all links on a page are given numbers within the browser so you can easily jump to a given link. As I’m a Firefox girl, I looked around for an FF extension that would give me similar functionality. So I’d argue that this really is an edge-case between the web page design and the user’s choices/software configuration. At worst, VR users should be able to TAB to any link in a page — so nothing should be ever completely inaccessible. And if an icon was used, it wouldn’t/shouldn’t be the link itself. The main link’s text would/should still be there to be used.
      - _Redd 2:29 pm on February 15, 2013
        
        A friend and I were talking about this……
        
        1. WHAT exactly enables tabbing?
        2. Is the tabbing behavior consistent for screen readers, voice-recognition systems, and other AT?
        3.is it necessary to also add a:focus if you want the focus to be in sync with tabbing?
        
        I welcome any url links, authoritative sources, or insights on this. I know that between the two of us, we could not answer these questions between ourselves.
      - esmi 4:07 pm on February 15, 2013
        
        1. It’s default browser behaviour. Just like web developers have HTMLHTML HTML is an acronym for Hyper Text Markup Language. It is a markup language that is used in the development of web pages and websites. specs, browser developers have W3CW3C The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international community where Member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web standards.https://www.w3.org/. User Agent specs that they need to follow.
        
        2. Pretty much, yes. Different AT might have their own inbuilt helper functionality (which, by & large, is outside of our remit as developers) but, by default, they should all fall back to the default tabbing behaviour.
        
        3. Yes. And if you want to support older version of IE (IE8 or below), you also need to apply the same styling to :active pseudo class.
        
        4. http://accessites.org/site/2007/05/keyboard-friendly-link-focus/
      - _Redd 4:37 pm on February 15, 2013
        
        Awesome, thank you esmi from both of us!
- GrahamArmfield 5:09 pm on February 15, 2013
  
  I finished 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 I was talking about the other day and after some initial teething problems it’s now available – through my own site initially but I intend submitting to WP plugin repository when I’ve worked out how I do that.
  
  The plugin places a Log Out link into the admin toolbar. I’ve tested it with Dragon Naturally Speaking and on an iPad and it seems to work OK.
  
  Originally I was attempting to get the Log Out link into the main menu – above the Dashboard link but I couldn’t get that to work properly.
  
  I’d welcome any feedback if people want to try it out – it’s available at: http://www.coolfields.co.uk/2013/02/wordpress-permanently-visible-log-out-link-plugin-version-0-1/
  - esmi 5:32 pm on February 15, 2013
    
    Cool! Have you had a look at Plugin Submission and Promotion?
  - _Redd 7:55 pm on February 15, 2013
    
    AWESOME!!! And so timely! Do you forsee any issues with multisiteMultisite Multisite is a WordPress feature which allows users to create a network of sites on a single WordPress installation. Available since WordPress version 3.0, Multisite is a continuation of WPMU or WordPress Multiuser project. WordPress MultiUser project was discontinued and its features were included into WordPress core.https://codex.wordpress.org/Create_A_Network.?
    - _Redd 8:56 pm on February 15, 2013
      
      @graham
      
      http://red-hound.com/Redd/logintop/login-plugin-test/
      
      So far, so great on WordPress multisiteMultisite Multisite is a WordPress feature which allows users to create a network of sites on a single WordPress installation. Available since WordPress version 3.0, Multisite is a continuation of WPMU or WordPress Multiuser project. WordPress MultiUser project was discontinued and its features were included into WordPress core.https://codex.wordpress.org/Create_A_Network. 3.5.1!! Woo! Woo!
  - _Redd 2:56 pm on February 20, 2013
    
    Good morning Graham, on one of my test sites (multisiteMultisite Multisite is a WordPress feature which allows users to create a network of sites on a single WordPress installation. Available since WordPress version 3.0, Multisite is a continuation of WPMU or WordPress Multiuser project. WordPress MultiUser project was discontinued and its features were included into WordPress core.https://codex.wordpress.org/Create_A_Network. set up) I have both yours and Joe’s 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 activated.
    
    So far, when I am “in” WordPress, the login and logout functions seem to be fine–however, one of the things I do is “View Page” to look at my work, and that opens in another tab.
    
    I get network access message errors when I try to log out through the “normal” logout screen on the new tab. I’m never sure if it’s an actual network problem, but you may want to check the function of the “standard” logout link, on a new tab, with the plugin installed.
    
    The difference between the logout message I get when I log out of a site WITHOUT the plugin activated is ……wp-login.php?loggedout=true
    
    The logout message I get when the plugin activated is….wp-login.php?action=logout&_wpnonce=e965affe42
    
    So it looks like processing a nonce may be the culprit
    
    That said, your plugin and Joes are some of the BEST are REAL progress for WordPress! Thank you thank you thank you!
    - GrahamArmfield 4:36 pm on February 20, 2013
      
      Hello _Redd, thanks for the notes.
      
      To place the Log Out link in the toolbar I’m using the admin_bar_menu hook to call a function that calls the add_menu() function.
      
      One of the parms I’m passing is the link for the item which is provided by wp_logout_url(). I’ve left the redirect parm empty to allow the default processing. This seemed to me to be the safest way to get the appropriate link as I couldn’t track down the function where the existing logout links are added to the toolbar.
      
      This seems to be correct as per the guidance on the codex – notably: https://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/wp_logout_url but if I’ve made a mistake I’d be grateful of any pointers to the correct way to generate a Log Out link.
      
      I have a test site without my 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 running and the existing Log Out link does include the reference to the nonce.
      - _Redd 4:53 pm on February 20, 2013
        
        Thank you so much for the rapid response….a lot for me to learn from, personally, and a lot for me to chew on. And sadly, much is of this is over my head. I’m like a monkey looking at the back of a watch with a lot of this stuff! But! I’ll review the links you’ve provided, revisit this and get back with you for the results…..it might be a couple of days, but will definitely revisit.
        
        Thanks again!
George Nilsen 1:08 pm on February 14, 2013

I canot get access directly from http://myvikingdomain.com but can’t get more than ‘you had a typo’–which worked ONLY once. Now I have to go from a ‘1 result’ menu (w/o seeing the result) by clicking on the ‘fb’ icon(linked to the domain) to get access. How can anyone get there to read my posts & pages, market my books?
esmi 2:12 pm on February 14, 2013

@George Nilsen: Sorry? I don’t follow you…

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IRC Meeting Summary: 13 Feb 2013

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