Effective today, the theme accessibility 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)-ready guidelines have been updated. The new guidelines more closely adhere to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 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/.) expectations, although it continues to be the case that WCAG does not apply directly to themes; WCAG is a measurement for content, and themes are only a wrapper for your content.
Why are the accessibility-ready requirements changing?
The original requirements were written in 2011, and added to the theme review process in 2012. This was before WCAG 2.1 or WCAG 2.2 were published, and before HTML5 or ARIA had wide support and adoption.
Since 2012, general awareness of accessibility has increased, and the capabilities for creating more accessible websites have also improved. It’s become increasingly important for WordPress’ Accessibility-ready requirements to modernize, to ensure that people implementing accessibility-ready themes are getting the best experiences.
Where can I find the new accessibility-ready requirements?
The theme review guidelines have been updated and are listed in the Accessibility section of the theme review handbook. The topics are currently being maintained on the Accessibility Team’s documentation site. On that site, you can also find extensive guidance on all of the accessibility issues raised by the theme review requirements.
What has changed?
You should read the requirements for full details on what has changed. At a high level, here is a summary of changes:
- Guidelines for themes have been updated to only include requirements, and “recommendations” have been removed. Some recommendations have been made requirements; other recommendations have been removed as they are best practices and not blockers to receiving accessibility-ready tag approval.
- Requirement titles have been rewritten to clearly summarize the expectation.
- All guidelines now follow a standard format with the following sections:
- Basic principle: explains what the requirement is and why it matters.
- Testing: includes a list of tools needed for the testing process and detailed, numbered, step-by-step explanations on how to test the requirement, with clear pass/fail criteria at each step.
- WCAG resources: links to relevant WCAG docs that apply to our requirement, for people who want to learn more.
- A standard process has been established for documenting testing in a Google Sheet, with a copyable template. The aim of this process is to make it easier for anyone to test, even without prior accessibility knowledge, and to ensure that theme developers receive consistent feedback, regardless of who tests their theme.
- Some new requirements have been added:
How can I learn more about the requirements?
The documentation is very detailed, and covers how to test each requirement. However, to help users understand the process from the beginning, @alh0319 will be hosting a webinar on Thursday, May 21st – Global Accessibility Awareness Day. She’ll walk through the entire process of testing a theme for accessibility-ready standards, and attendees will be able to learn by testing themes during the webinar.
If enough people sign up for the webinar, the aim is to get all of the current 108 accessibility-ready themes re-tested against the new requirements. @rianrietveld and @joedolson will be available to provide support and help testers work through challenges!
How does this impact my live accessibility-ready theme?
All accessibility-ready themes will be expected to update their themes to meet the new standards. Many of the requirements are essentially the same, but there are some new requirements as noted above.
Theme authors will have until June 30th, 2026 to get their themes updated — either to update their accessibility, or to remove the tag.
Read the requirements, update your theme, then please request a review when you’re ready!
Thanks & Props
The primary work on the new accessibility-ready guidelines was done by Amber Hinds, with assistance from Joe Dolson. However, many others have contributed to the long process of developing the requirements and the process for testing:
Did you help with this process, but don’t see yourself in the list? Please comment below to let us know!
Additional thanks are owed to InstaWP, for donating their services to mount testing sites. You may wonder why this process isn’t using Playground, which is already available on WordPress.org. Unfortunately, Playground renders inside an iframe iFrame is an acronym for an inline frame. An iFrame is used inside a webpage to load another HTML document and render it. This HTML document may also contain JavaScript and/or CSS which is loaded at the time when iframe tag is parsed by the user’s browser., which breaks a number of key testing tools used to examine the content, particularly bookmarklets. It is possible to test within Playground, but considerably more labor-intensive.
The goal is to make it easier for anyone to contribute to theme accessibility-ready testing using common tools, and InstaWP makes this possible.
Reviewed by @alh0319 and @rianrietveld.
#accessibility-ready
