Accessibility Team Meeting Notes: July 3, 2020

These are the weekly notes for 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) Team meeting that happens on Fridays. You can read the full transcript on our Slack channel and find the meeting’s agenda here.

Changes to the “Transform to” button and 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. “movers” in 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/

The team discussed the newly updated controls in the block toolbar for the ‘Transform to’ and ‘movers’ actions. The new design proposes quite a few substantial changes and this has raised accessibility concerns within the team.

@afercia noted a few problems, such as a missing ‘grab area’ and the ‘hand’ mouse pointer now being used for interactive controls. Other team members also raised questions about the obviousness of this new user interface.

A summary of the team’s feedback has been posted on the issue for follow up.

Add a ‘description’ property to block patterns

We also discussed this Gutenberg issue that proposes to add a ‘description’ property to the newly added feature of Block Patterns.

The team raised arguments around the requirement of such a property, and the pros and cons behind such a rule. We decided that the property should be labeled as required while not being enforced with any checks.

With this feedback, @poena proceeded to finish and merge the corresponding PR. 🎉

#meeting-notes