WordPress Accessibility Meeting notes from 8 November 2019

Meeting transcript on Slack

Election of new team reps

Discussed responsibilities of a team repTeam Rep A Team Rep is a person who represents the Make WordPress team to the rest of the project, make sure issues are raised and addressed as needed, and coordinates cross-team efforts.. Since we failed to account for the time change prior to this meeting, we opted to delay the election until 11/15, to get back to a clear schedule and maximize attendance.

Gathered nominees: @audrasjb nominated himself, @nataliemac nominated @afercia and @nrqsnchz. @afercia declined the nomination.

@nrqsnchz was not present at this point in the meeting.

If we end up with only two candidates, the vote will be a formality; but nominations remain open until 16:00 UTC on 15 November 2019.

Adjust meeting time due to daylight savings change

@joedolson proposed changing the meeting to 16:00 UTC instead of 15:00 UTC, shifting the bug scrub an hour later, as well.

Agreed unanimously.

Update team and contributor badges on profiles

Due to time, postponing until 15 November. Members who need badges given opportunity to state that; will discuss next week, then pass assignments on.

Twenty Twenty read more 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.

Issue with the starter content in Twenty Twenty not conforming to WordPress 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)-ready standards regarding ‘read more’ links.

Argument was that there is no meaningful text because they are demo links. Accessibility team agreed that demo links should have equivalent demo text describing their purpose. None of the content is meaningful, but it should still demonstrate best practices.

Briefly also discussed the problems with all caps text in screen readers.

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

This is an old issue with no final decision. Not all blocks handle focus assignment the same way. Some blocks have clearly defined main editable areas, others don’t. Lack of consistency makes behavior unpredictable.

Couple proposals: Set initial focus on editable region for simple blocks (paragraph, heading) and set initial on focus on whatever wrapper is labeled with aria-label, in other cases. Alternately: do nothing. No artificial movements of focus on any blocks.

Proposed systematically identifying the patterns currently used and trying to identify why a given pattern is used. Created spreadsheet to review blocks and focus movements.