Here we are again, at the beginning of another great rendition of WordPress! As is normal at the beginning of a cycle, here are a few big issues that the WordPress Accessibility 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 would like to see focused on at this stage. These are mostly large areas where usability and accessibility need some concerted effort, in addition to some major decisions that need to be pinned down.
Media Library
The media library views have gotten a lot of good work recently, but there’s still a long ways to go. And it’s not just accessibility that’s needed here, but also some general usability questions for all users, as pointed out by Ryan Boren. Some work needs to go into the flow for all users; while all features need to be available via keyboard, it would be nice to explore a user flow that allows the work flow to be smooth, as well.
Tickets:
- #30512 – Improve media views accessibility
- #30599 – Media views: improve keyboard accessibility avoiding confusing tab stops
- #28820 – Focus isn’t clear when previewing an oEmbed from Add Media Panel
#30392 – Focus moves out of insert media overlay when tabbing beyond Insert into post button – Fixed- #30386 – Keyboard user has to tab through all uploade dimages to insert an image
- #23562 – Using speech recognition software with the add media panel
- #28864 – Cannot access edit menu options with keyboard inside Image Editor
- #26550 – Some anchor links should be buttons in media microtemplates
- #25103 – Submit buttons on form fields in the Add Media Panel
Post Editing and Authoring
There are a number of outstanding issues relating to authoring and editing posts, largely relating to some confusing tab order and needed improvements in flow both for mobile and users with disabilities. The current set up provides an extremely easy tab navigation from the title to the post content fields, but accessing anything in between via keyboard can be quite confusing. See also the flow comments from Mark Jaquith.
Tickets:
- #29838 – Post editing area: keyboard accessibility, tab order, and focus
- #23760 – Cannot use spacebar to trigger OK button or links in Publish widget A WordPress Widget is a small block that performs a specific function. You can add these widgets in sidebars also known as widget-ready areas on your web page. WordPress widgets were originally created to provide a simple and easy-to-use way of giving design and structure control of the WordPress theme to the user.
- #30368 – Issue with category The 'category' taxonomy lets you group posts / content together that share a common bond. Categories are pre-defined and broad ranging. selection using voiceover
- #27555 – Make tag post meta 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. box more accessible
- #30407 – Add keyboard shortcut for switching between Visual and Text editors
- #30490 – TinyMCE: switch editor tabs focus style
- #30619 – The wpView toolbar is not accessible by keyboard
#30345 – Quick edit: form submitted when activating cancel via keyboard – Fixed#28431 – There’s no way to close the “keyboard shortcuts” modal with the keyboard – Fixed
Use of .screen-reader-text in front-end
This is a long-standing issue in handling some front-end accessibility issues. Numerous proposals have been floated, but there’s no strategic goal right now. Among the proposals are to add a theme support registry for the class .screen-reader-text, to set up core Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. styles for the front-end that implement a .screen-reader-text class, or to simply add new information with that class and leave it to theme authors and site admins to handle the changes in front-end HTML 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. output. This effects several other tickets. (I may not have caught all of them.)
Part of the question here is for any future needs to add contextual references to core output: at what level is it necessary for us to avoid HTML changes on the front-end?
- #29699 – add_theme_support( ‘screen-reader-text’ );
- #18650 – Accessible dropdown widgets
- #26553 – Comments popup link
Visual focus indication in Admin Menu
This ticket has gotten a lot of design attention but was not completed in time for 4.1. It needs further UI 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. feedback.
- #28599 – Better visual focus indication in Admin Menu
Miscellaneous outstanding issues
There are a large number of HTML inconsistencies, such as missing labels, links used as buttons. Not all of them have outstanding tickets, but I’m aiming to spend some time clearing out these minor issues so that we can better focus on more complex issues. Most of these are very small issues that with simple HTML/JS/PHP PHP (recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a widely-used open source general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for web development and can be embedded into HTML. http://php.net/manual/en/intro-whatis.php. changes, but might require some CSS CSS is an acronym for cascading style sheets. This is what controls the design or look and feel of a site. updates. And we all know how fun it is to spend time in the WP admin stylesheet.
I know that there are some issues that don’t yet have tickets; I’ll be raising those, as well.
- #28873 – Javascript JavaScript or JS is an object-oriented computer programming language commonly used to create interactive effects within web browsers. WordPress makes extensive use of JS for a better user experience. While PHP is executed on the server, JS executes within a user’s browser. https://www.javascript.com/. code for adding bookmarklet Press This is hard to access with keyboard only
- #30486 – Missing label associations throughout network admin
- #29715 – Not-unique accesskey values may break quick edit and bulk edit form submission
- #26562 – Remove title attributes class-wp-admin-bar.php
- #26600 – Search installed themes input has no submit button
- #29955 – Section 508 issues found on WP 4.0 admin page
- #26504 – Semantic elements for non-link links
- #30685 – Better Login Error and Message displaying
- #21221 – Image title and alt attribute content should be texturized
- #30914 – WP List Table: improve table footer tab sequence
- #26601 – Inappropriate content in heading on Themes page
- #29022 – Screen reader text and link title isn’t updated when plugin 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 update count is updated
- #26167 – Plugin activation links need to contain plugin name and the Plugin column should be marked as row header The header of your site is typically the first thing people will experience. The masthead or header art located across the top of your page is part of the look and feel of your website. It can influence a visitor’s opinion about your content and you/ your organization’s brand. It may also look different on different screen sizes.
- #26550 – Some anchor links should be buttons in media microtemplates
- #30706 – Add aria-describedby to autofocused fields
