Accessibility Team Meeting Notes: March 26, 2021

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.

Update from working groups

• Design: no update.
• Docs and Patterns: @Jill Mugge has done some work on the Pattern Library, specifically the Alternative text pattern as well as fleshing out more topics under Content patterns. @azhiyadev has started to work on the accessibility handbook.
• General: no update.
• 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/: A few updates
  • @critterverse completed a recent call for FSE testing and detailed the experience in a blog post. Feedback on FSE: Unified keyboard shortcuts for sidebars is also welcome.
  • @annezazu reported that the next call for FSE testing is now live. The team is encouraged to get involved. Let the Gutenberg team know if you have any accessibility pain points with the spacer block particularly around the usability and output of the 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..
  • @annezazu mentioned that @alexstine has already provided feedback on this open PR that adds the column count to the column block label to improve the accessibility of the column block. If you have the time, more feedback is welcome.
  • @annezazu mentioned a post confirming the decision to drop IE11 support. @joedolson asked that the team be kept up-to-date on the procedure for removal of IE11. In the meantime, the team will continue to monitor progress.
• Media: lots of planned work but no progress at this point.
• MetaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress.: no update.
• Themes: no update.

Open floor

• Next week @azhiyadev will run the accessibility team meeting and @alexstine will cover the bug scrub.
• Even though more clocks are changing due to daylight savings time, bug scrub and meeting times will stay the same.

#meeting-notes