Accessibility Team Meeting Notes: August 16, 2024

These are the bi-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 here or see the full meeting schedule.

Updates from the working groups

NOTE: Only groups that provided updates are shown below.

General Working Group: @joedolson shared this update for discussion/comment:

• Lots of progress on patches, but I’ve been really short on time to get them committed. Hopefully will make some progress next week.

Gutenberg Working Group: @annezazu for this ‘hefty’ share from the 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/ working group:

• 6.6 Specificity/Style tracking issue was opened to help gather and fix related specificity issues from the 6.6 release.
• Admin design: an issue for Systematising typography styles in the admin UI was opened to “ensure design consistency and ease of maintenance”.
• Design Share #61 (Jul 15-Aug 9) — recent recap post of design efforts and a great way to see what’s top of mine for design contributors as well as how to get involved.
• Canonical blocks: New tracking issue for blocks to expand pattern/theme design with a PR underway to add an Accordion Block.
• Comments pagination 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.: efforts were kicked off to Deprecate Comments Pagination block
• Components: design efforts have started to update TimePicker component design. Great spot for accessibility to get involved.
• Data views: outside of quick improvements to grid density and ease of us, a PR is underway to bring support for quick editing in the list view layout.
• Block supports & Extensibility: Stabilize the experimentalDefaultControls block supports property & Stabilize border block support keys
• Fonts: a new issue explores exposing the Font Library for classic themes & and another discusses whether to make elements font options referenceable. Both are excellent for themers to dive into.
• Gallery block: Add lightbox option in gallery block link control.
• Grid: various issues are underway to improve grid support including broader discussions regarding major flows and questions around what should be the default mode (manual or auto).
• Media: very early PR for WIP Add experiment for client-side media processing which “lays the foundation for client-side media processing in Gutenberg—meaning we can do things like thumbnail generation, cropping, compression, and format conversion (transcoding) all in the browser.”
• Performance: PR Inserter: Try improving pattern loading to both improve performance and the experience of patterns in the Inserter to lessen any jumpiness in the UIUI UI is an acronym for User Interface - the layout of the page the user interacts with. Think ‘how are they doing that’ and less about what they are doing. for users.
• Post formats: PR underway for Query loop / Post template: Enable post format filter which touches on broader ideas around bringing post formats to block themes.
• Templates: PR landed Add plugin template registration API greatly easing plugins registering templates with some follow up issues opened already including Template registration API: allow setting the template author to something different from a plugin. Tied to this an issue was opened around adding template states to the Site Editor, similar to block states.
• Writing: Drag & drop: allow direct block drag, Improve visualization of side by side dragging
• Zoom out: an iteration issue has been opened to track efforts for 6.7 and includes PRs like Zoom Out: Escape when clicking directly on the canvas or pressing enter on the canvas to help sort through how to engage and disengage from this option.

@joedolson commented:

• Would like to second @annezazu pointing out of the accordion block as something that should get attention. It’s been a heavily demanded block, and maybe if it goes in we can get ‘accordion’ removed as a search keyword for the details block.

@poena also commented:

• Yes the “Deprecate comment pagination” issue could benefit from comments from the team. I need to reply back, it is on my to do list.

Media Working Group: @annezazu for this ‘hefty’ share from the Gutenberg working group:

• @antpb is continuing to work on a PR for the future media library interface, but it’s not ready for reviewing yet; once that’s making more progress, media will need to be a major focus.

Meta Working Group: @annezazu for this ‘hefty’ share from the Gutenberg working group:

• Joe Dolson will be doing a final a11yAccessibility 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) review of the Playground block next week, then it should become available for Learn users after that.

NOTE: If you’d like to have a topic added to the agenda for our next meeting, please mention it in the comments on an upcoming agenda.