Accessibility Team Meeting Notes: July 02, 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.

Announcements 📣

• WordPress 7.1 Roadmap is published
• WordPress Contributor Dashboard: New Views, Custom Ladder, and More
• WP A11y Docs update June 2026
• Call for Contributor DayContributor Day Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/ Table Leads Nomination for 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. US 2026

Discussion: Pure White and Pure Black Color Combinations

• The team discussed accessibility concerns around using pure white text on dark backgrounds and near-black text on pure white backgrounds, which can cause visual discomfort for people with astigmatism, dyslexia, and other vision impairments.
• Current research and discussions around WCAGWCAG WCAG is an acronym for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. These guidelines are helping make sure the internet is accessible to all people no matter how they would need to access the internet (screen-reader, keyboard only, etc) https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG21/. 3 and the Accessible Perceptual Contrast Algorithm (APCA) suggest that extreme contrast may not always provide the best accessibility experience.
• A proposal was made to create a TracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. ticket documenting authoritative research and evidence supporting the use of off-white and off-black color combinations instead of pure white and pure black.
• Team members were invited to contribute research and references to a shared document to support the proposal.
• It was also noted that 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/ already uses an off-white color in many places, suggesting the use of pure white in the WordPress 7.0 admin color scheme may have been unintentional. A follow-up ticket will be opened to propose updating the color in a future point releaseMinor Release A set of releases or versions having the same minor version number may be collectively referred to as .x , for example version 5.2.x to refer to versions 5.2, 5.2.1, 5.2.3, and all other versions in the 5.2 (five dot two) branch of that software. Minor Releases often make improvements to existing features and functionality..

Docs

• For now we do not have much to share but will have more updates during the next meeting as @rianrietveld took some time off. And we already have monthly doc progress updates which is been shared as part of the announcement.

General

• Work on WordPress 7.1 is progressing, with ongoing discussions around proposed admin bar design changes that may have accessibility implications.
• The next few weeks will be critical as enhancements need to land before BetaBeta A pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process. 1 to be included in the release.
• The team emphasized that accessibility testing continues throughout the release cycle, even after features are committed, allowing issues to be identified and addressed before the final release.

Gutenberg

• Ongoing Gutenberg work is focused on bringing the admin bar to both Gutenberg and classic admin screens for a more consistent experience.
• Progress continues on the Icon, Playlist, and Tabs blocks, while work on the Table of Contents 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. appears to be stalled.
• Accessibility reviews are still needed for lightbox captions, the client-side media experience, and the media editor modal.
• Additional Gutenberg features are also under review as part of the team’s accessibility testing efforts.

Themes

• The deadline for accessibility-ready theme reviews has been extended to allow more time for completing the backlog of reviews.
• The team is currently working through more than 100 themes, with 79 themes still awaiting an initial review, alongside themes requiring re-tests, updates, and report reviews.
• Once the backlog is cleared, the review process is expected to become more manageable by focusing primarily on new theme submissions.
• The team also discussed the value of hosting another live theme review and Q&A session to help contributors build confidence in the review process.

#accessibility, #meeting-notes