Accessibility Team Meeting Notes: January 7, 2022

These are the notes for the Make 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 meeting, that occurred Friday, January 7, 17:00 UTC. You can read the entire transcript on our Slack channel and view the Meeting Agenda here. The meeting begins on time after the conclusion of the bug scrub, a welcome to new attendees with introductions, and rules for a family-friendly meeting.

Goals for WordPress 6.0 release

• @ryokuhi suggested that with WordPress 5.9 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. 1 released this past Tuesday and WordPress trunk is now the 6.0 Alpha, it’s probably a good time to begin defining goals for the next release; and
• With WordPress 5.6, 5.7 and 5.8, we pubished post on the Make Accessibility Team site, asking for public feedback on possible major team goals for the next release. For the 5.9 release, we didn’t do this; after some discussion, now is a good time to publish this; and
• This post, Accessibility Team’s Goals for WordPress 6.0 and Beyond, is a good starting point for new contributors.

Updates from Working Groups

• Media Team @joedolson reported that this team is setting goals for 6.0 with a major focus being the redesign of the Media Library’s Image Editor.

Update from January 7 Bug Scrub

• There are no open accessibility issues for 5.9, but we’re keeping an eye on the About Page;
• There’s an open ticket milestoned for 5.9.1, which is either a 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/ or a Twenty Twenty-Two theme issue;
• There are 9 tickets in the awaiting review queue; and
• There are already 17 tickets milestoned for 6.0.

Open Floor

@sabernhardt requested at least one more reviewer for a developer note about theme-focused tickets (such as the toolbar scroll padding, the headerHeader The header of your site is typically the first thing people will experience. The masthead or header art located across the top of your page is part of the look and feel of your website. It can influence a visitor’s opinion about your content and you/ your organization’s brand. It may also look different on different screen sizes. image alt attribute, and the RSS widgetWidget A WordPress Widget is a small block that performs a specific function. You can add these widgets in sidebars also known as widget-ready areas on your web page. WordPress widgets were originally created to provide a simple and easy-to-use way of giving design and structure control of the WordPress theme to the user. icon). Please reach out directly if interested. @ryokuhi closed the meeting with a quick reminder that next bug-scrub will be on Friday, January 14th at 16:00 UTC and the next Team Meeting will be on Friday, January 21st at 17:00 UTC.