Accessibility Team’s goals for WordPress 5.6 and beyond

Following a pattern established during the last WordPress releases, it has become common for the 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) Team to set targets for each release during the final stages of the previous one.

Given the heavy involvement of the Team between 5.5 RCRelease Candidate A beta version of software with the potential to be a final product, which is ready to release unless significant bugs emerge. 1 and the 5.5 release, it was impossible to discuss possible goals before. Also, given that the kickoff meeting for WordPress 5.6 took place on Wednesday, 19th August, this discussion can’t be delayed anymore.

As such, the Accessibility Team is going to discuss possible targets for WordPress 5.6 during the next weekly meeting, which will take place on Friday, 28th August, 2020 at 15:00 UTC.

If you have an accessibility goal you would like to see the team pursue on WordPress coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress., you are more than invited to add it in the comment section below and let us know. You are then invited to attend to the next weekly meeting, when possible goals will be discussed and prioritized.

If a certain goal won’t be selected for the 5.6 release, it can always be included in the list that will be created for the 5.7 release.

While a strict timeline can’t be set too many months in advance, the next Call for Accessibility Team’s goals will likely be published around Friday, 13th November, 2020, that is, the Friday before WordPress 5.6 RC 1. Possible goals will then be discussed during the weekly meeting on Friday, 20th November, 2020. Around the same time, an extra bug-scrub to identify possible good-first-bug Core tickets and 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/ issues will take place.

All the above dates are flexible and can be changed according to specific needs, in particular in case they run the risk of detract from bug fixing during Release CandidateRelease Candidate A beta version of software with the potential to be a final product, which is ready to release unless significant bugs emerge..

Such an early planning will probably become even more useful with next releases, given that four major WordPress releases are already planned for 2021 and each release cycle will be shorter. Planning in advance possible goals during Release Candidate will also allow contributors to have a break in between releases, reducing possible sources of burnout.

#5-6, #goals