Accessibility Team Meeting Notes: May 21, 2026

These is 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 alternate Thursday in #accessibility. You can read the full transcript here or see the full meeting schedule.

• GAAD Live accessibility-ready theme testing
• WordPress 7.0 Armstrong is released on 20th May

Docs

• Accessibility documentation updates are currently in progress.
• @Annelies Verhelst wrote an update of the page about accessibility legislation worldwide. The PR is under review.
• Work is ongoing to improve cross-linking, consistency, and overall usability of accessibility resources.
• Accessibility testing documentation is also being updated.
• An inventory of accessibility information across WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ and related sites is being prepared ahead of WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. Europe.

General

• WordPress 7.0 has officially been released, and trunk is now re-opened for commits.
• Work on WordPress 7.1 can now begin, though the release schedule is not finalized yet.
• The upcoming bug scrubs will mainly focus on reviewing tickets currently assigned to the 7.1 milestone.
• The team will also monitor and address any new issues that may need inclusion in the 7.0.1 release.

Gutenberg

• Several accessibility issues 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/, particularly around visual revisionsRevisions The WordPress revisions system stores a record of each saved draft or published update. The revision system allows you to see what changes were made in each revision by dragging a slider (or using the Next/Previous buttons). The display indicates what has changed in each revision., are still being worked on for WordPress 7.0.1 and 7.1.
• Key features expected to receive accessibility testing for 7.1 include:
  • Tabs 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.
  • Real-time collaboration
  • Client-side media editing
• These features were originally planned for 7.0 but were moved to the 7.1 cycle late in the release process.
• Some accessibility fixes have already been committed in Gutenberg, while others are still in progress and may be split between the 7.0.1 and 7.1 releases.

Themes

• The Accessibility team re-tested accessibility-ready themes against the updated guidelines.
• There are 108 accessibility-ready themes were under review.
• Reports were planned to shared with theme authors to request any necessary accessibility updates and improvements.’

#meeting-notes