Accessibility Team Meeting Notes for 5 July 2019

Meeting transcript on Slack

Media tickets updates

A few more tickets discussed, but relatively little progress this week.

Success Metrics and framing for 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/ SidebarSidebar A sidebar in WordPress is referred to a widget-ready area used by WordPress themes to display information that is not a part of the main content. It is not always a vertical column on the side. It can be a horizontal rectangle below or above the content area, footer, header, or any where in the theme.

@sarahmonster raised the concern that we were looking at options without having done prior work to determine what was considered success and how to evaluate that, so we’ve taken a step back to define that.

Secondarily, we want to move away from discussing this in a private conversation and improve transparency as we brainstorm.

Still in progress at defining the path for opening this discussion; summer plans & WCEU have slowed progress.

WCEU Update

@ryokuhi was at the 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) theme auditor table, which was very interesting.

@poena commented that the themes table was in a different room from the theme auditor, so they couldn’t work together.

@ryokuhi Would very much like to see more presence from #a11y team members at major WordCamps and contributor days

Discussed the feasibility of that, given the expense for members & size of the team; considered the possibility of having a remote 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/. focused on accessibility.

Gutenberg Open Forum

@ryokuhi will add some thoughts about Snackbars

Continuing discussion, by mutual agreement, focused on how we might imagine a remote contributor day for accessibility & other teams.