One of the three top priorities for development in the next releases of WordPress is to enhance and modernize the editor. This is an important project to give users the ability to create rich and diverse content without requiring extensive knowledge of code. From an 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) perspective, this is both an incredible opportunity to build a powerful and flexible experience for all users and an enormous risk that we could end up reducing the effectiveness of the editor for users with disabilities, or require them to use a 2nd-class editor without these enhanced editing capabilities.
We in the WordPress accessibility community embrace the challenge of creating a great new experience, and want to assure the community that we are going to do everything we can to make sure that any new editor experience is as accessible as we can possibly make it.
The most fundamental part of democratizing publishing is the ability to write and publish content. Without that feature, WordPress is not achieving its core Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. mission. There are always challenges in creating content accessibly, but it is not an unachievable goal.
It’s still early in the process, and there are many ideas floating around about how the new editing experience should be structured and how its interface should behave. The concerns for accessibility are universal, however. The new editor should consider accessibility to be a priority both in how content is created and in the nature of the content that is created.
While the accessibility team wants the final implementation to be exceptional and accessible, we don’t want to limit the possibilities by imposing restrictions before they are necessary. However, there are some concepts that should be kept in mind early on that will significantly impact accessibility during development.
Fundamentals of Accessibility to Consider
- Some common user interface interactions are extremely difficult to use non-visually. Drag and drop is an interaction that poses significant difficulties, since it is very difficult to disclose in audio how the dragged object and the potential targets are interacting. This doesn’t mean that the editor can’t use these interactions, but if they are used, there will need to be an alternative method to do the same task which is accessible.
- Fundamentally, all outputted code is organized in a linear manner. The experience of the content for keyboard users and for screen reader users will also always be linear. Ensuring that the content authoring process encourages a linear path will make the process easier for all users.
- Whenever possible, the user interface should encourage people to create semantically valid code; encouraging the use of correct headings (e.g., being content aware to know which headings are valid for a new content block 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.); encouraging the addition of alt attributes, or defining table headings appropriately for tabular data.
Updating the editor is a great opportunity to explore some of the requirements articulated in the Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG). These requirements discuss how an editor should allow users to navigate the structure of their content and how the editor should encourage the creation of accessible content. A richer editor experience, with integrated prompts and formatting tools, has the potential to suggest best practices throughout the content authoring process. This would be an important growth step for WordPress.
It should be self-evident that the new editor experience needs to meet the standards established for accessibility in WordPress core. The editor is the central experience of WordPress content creation, so planning ways to consider accessibility at every stage through the process is crucial to the success of the Editor project.
Help develop the new editor
If you’re interested in helping with the new Editor project, follow the development conversations in #core-editor and share your thoughts and ideas. You can also follow the GitHub project for the editor, where you can file tickets or follow specific issues like keyboard shortcuts, drag and drop, and the mobile interface. Weekly chats are in #core-editor, Wednesdays at 18:00 UTC.
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