Gutenberg Accessibility Status Update

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/ 4.3 was released today with a number of continuing 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) adjustments.

Major accessibility changes in Gutenberg 4.3 include:

1. PR 11466: Add aria-label to images in Gallery block during edit mode/a>: Uses aria-label to communicate the position of the image inthe gallery as well as information about the image. (Furthers the work on Issue 3836, mentioned last week.)
2. PR 11459: aria-checked only allowed on matching ARIA roles – fixes an issue so that the active 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. will be announced in the block navigation list.
3. PR 11607: Alt+F10 should navigate to block toolbar regardless of visibility – Fixes an issue where block toolbar could not be focused by shortcut if it was not already visible.
4. PR 11543: Return focus to element that opened publish panel – Ensures that focus is not lost after publishing post.
5. PR 11422: Add multi-block selection announcement. – Read out the number of blocks selected when more than one block is selected.
6. PR 11403: Constrain tabbing with post publish panel – Completed in-progress feature identified last week.

A few more minor issues have also been addressed:

1. PR 11560: Improve empty block text – Resolves issues #9076 and #5591 by fixing the text present for empty blocks to a) make it self-consistent and b) clarify how to use the forward slash shortcut to change blocks.
2. PR 11653: Change aria-label depending on content of paragraph block – Ensure that empty paragraph blocks get instructional text and non-empty blocks get descriptive text.

There are currently 90 open accessibility issues on Gutenberg. (Versus 89 as of last week.)

Pull Requests in Progress

There are currently 19 open pull requests labeled for Accessibility.

Requests 11218 (alt attributes on images in the editor) and 10462 (move block toolbar below block contents) were highlighted as important requests in progress, and are still in progress.