Joe Dolson 11:44 pm on November 13, 2019

Agenda for Accessibility Team Meeting 15 November 2019

This is the proposed agenda for the weekly 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) team meeting on Friday November 15, 2019 at 16:00 UTC.

Elect New team Representatives for 2019-2020
Assign new team & contributor badges
WordPress 5.3 release: comments, concerns, updates.

If you have any additional topics to propose, please comment below.

The Accessibility bug scrub will be held on Friday November 15, 2019 at 15:00 UTC.

This meeting is held in the #accessibility channel in the Making WordPress SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. (requires registration).

Andrea Fercia 12:57 pm on November 14, 2019
I think we’d need to continue discussing two items raised on the 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) SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. channel:
- Twenty Twenty submenus for the horizontal desktop menu https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C02RP4X03/p1573178931180900
- Initial focus on 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/ blocks, raised by @gziolo https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C02RP4X03/p1573228690345500
Andrew Ozz 7:25 pm on November 14, 2019

I have a question/concern re: 5.3.

Currently WordPress has eight color schemes and it is quite easy to add more if needed. I tried to raise a concern during development about degraded user experience, see https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/47153#comment:71. Unfortunately that was not taken into consideration and the changes were added to all eight color schemes, including the low-contrast one, the “Light” scheme.

Is this acceptable or should this be treated as an “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) regression” and corrected asap? As far as I see all software that offers more than one color scheme has higher and lower contrast options, shouldn’t that be the case in WordPress?

Please note that I may not be able to attend the chat tomorrow, but will be happy to participate async 🙂
- Joe Dolson 7:29 pm on November 14, 2019
  
  I’m not sure it can be considered an 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) regression, as those color schemes did not meet accessibility standards previously, either. However, it is definitely something that should be considered a design regression, and should be addressed on those grounds. There’s already a relevant ticket, milestoned for 5.3.1: https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/48585, and we’ll add that to the conversation.
  - Andrew Ozz 8:11 pm on November 14, 2019
    
    …those color schemes did not meet 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) standards previously, either.
    
    Would that mean it is impossible to have a low-contract color scheme?
    
    Currently the Light scheme looks like this: https://cloudup.com/cZwUlQUrJ1Q. The only dark border there is around the title field. I agree, there is definitely a “design regression” there caused by the (attempted) accessibility fix. Are the rest of the colors acceptable, and if not, should the color scheme be scraped/removed or should it be changed to not be “light”? 🙂
Joe Dolson 8:16 pm on November 14, 2019

No, I don’t think that would be impossible; I’m just saying that we have no measurement metrics by which we could describe it as an 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) regression. We can absolutely add a low-contrast color scheme, *but* that scheme could only be described as an accessibility feature in a non-technical, non-standards-based manner, as there are no standards to positively describe low-contrast for accessibiliity.
- Andrew Ozz 8:19 pm on November 14, 2019
  
  Ah, I understand. Thanks a lot for explaining! 🙂
Andrea Fercia 9:26 am on November 15, 2019
I’d agree the design changes to the alternate color schemes need to be refined and improved, see for example the feedback from @melchoyce on #48585.

Historically, only the default color scheme aimed to be accessible. Also, in a way, the alternate color schemes have been always a bit neglected because of lack of time and resources to take care of them.

Considering today’s operating systems offer native dark mode themes, I’d tend to think it would be good to reconsider the entire purpose of the alternate color schemes. There’s been an experimental project to introduce a dark mode in WordPress, see #41928. That makes sense, as it tries to solve a problem. Instead, seems to me the current alternate color schemes aim to make “cosmetic” changes to the colors without specific criteria. For example, what is the problem the “Ectoplasm” color scheme solves? I’m not sure I can find an answer, other than it gives users fancy colors.

Provided that the default color scheme needs to be WCAGWCAG WCAG is an acronym for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. These guidelines are helping make sure the internet is accessible to all people no matter how they would need to access the internet (screen-reader, keyboard only, etc) https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG21/. compliant, maybe a better approach to the alternate color schemes would be crafting them to solve specific issues for specific users needs. For example:
- a dark theme to complement operating systems dark themes
- a low contrast theme to help users who struggle with strong contrast
- a theme with a good typeface to help users with dyslexia, preferably with options to adjust letter spacing and line-height
- and so on…
Those would be color schemes that actually solve problems.

That said, this would require a considerable effort and dedicated developers. I’m not sure there are available resources to handle this effort. Elevating color schemes to a coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. component may help. Also, the new focus on core-css (and the new dedicated SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. channel) may help as well. Worth also reminding there are now technologies that would allow to not use Sass at all. CSSCSS CSS is an acronym for cascading style sheets. This is what controls the design or look and feel of a site. variables would help a lot, though their introduction in core would need a broader discussion and would have an impact on IE 11 support.
- Mel Choyce 4:40 pm on November 15, 2019
  
  IMO, this is a much better approach for coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. color schemes (or maybe core admin themes, if we’re going beyond color to type) — gives them a purpose other than decoration.
  
  Also means we can reconsider the system we use to generate them — AFAIK, color schemes are still the only core usage of Sass. We might be able to deprecate that in favor of CSSCSS CSS is an acronym for cascading style sheets. This is what controls the design or look and feel of a site. variables.
  
  We can push the old schemes to https://wordpress.org/plugins/admin-color-schemes/ and maybe consider auto-installing it for anyone using an alternate color scheme?
Joe Dolson 4:48 pm on November 15, 2019

I definitely like the idea of moving aesthetic-only choices out of coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. (and also ditching SASS). With CSSCSS CSS is an acronym for cascading style sheets. This is what controls the design or look and feel of a site. variables, it would be trivial to use filters to generate custom schemes.

Comments are closed.

About Us

How you can help

Learn More

Agenda for Accessibility Team Meeting 15 November 2019

About Us

How you can help

Learn More

Share this: