Category Archives: Offsite Articles

Joe Dolson 7:08 pm on August 26, 2020  

Lend a Hand: Volunteers Needed for WP Accessibility Day

We have an upcoming event – do you want to contribute to the WordPress Community and its initiatives and 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)?

We need your help

We’re hosting the first-annual WordPress Accessibility Day October 2-3, 2020, a 24-hour event highlighting accessibility topics and making the online experience more inclusive for all. 

To make the event run smoothly around the world, we could use volunteers in the following roles:

  • Hosts;
  • Moderators; and 
  • Monitors

Reasons why you should volunteer

We’d love to have you as part of our team and here’s why:

  • WP Accessibility Day will bring together the best and brightest voices and you’ll be contributing to the WordPress Community and the event’s success;
  • You’ll have the opportunity to meet and interact with members of the Community and give back to an incredibly important initiative;
  • Help others become aware of why being creating more inclusive WordPress websites; and
  • Be on the ground floor of this first-ever accessibility event that impacts and shapes accessibility initiatives within the WordPress Community moving forward

 Sign up today and get more information about volunteer roles at the WP Accessibility Day volunteering page!

Joe Dolson 6:07 pm on December 15, 2014
Tags:   

Taking Steps for More Accessible Themes

We’ve been working with the Theme Review team to coordinate sharing more information about making themes accessible, with an eye towards the goals in our Accessible Themes Roadmap. The first step in that roadmap has been published today, Three Easy tips for Accessible Theming, published at the Make/Themes blog.

Read it, share it, and most of all, build accessible themes for WordPress!

#themes-2

esmi 8:40 pm on March 15, 2013
Tags: 3.6, ,   

WordPress 3.6 alpha Testers

You might want to consider installing the MP6 plugin to get a sneak preview of the new user interface. Thus far, I’ve noted 3 areas of concern:

  1. The contrast on “Collapse Menu” needs to be pushed up a little to #888
  2. Post revision comparisons. Not sure I’m comfortable with red-on-red and green-on-green. At present, the contrasts are way too low at 2.7:1 (heck — even I’m having problems reading the texts).
  3. Ditto the text for inactive plugins on the Plugins page with only a contrast ratio of 2.8:1. And absolutely no way to “highlight” (increase the contrast) on the text without a mouse.

#3-6, #core-2, #ui

esmi 12:14 pm on March 8, 2013
Tags: ,   

Accessibility for Theme Developers: First Draft Complete

I think I’ve finally finished! *gasp* Thank you to everyone who provided earlier feedback and jogged my memory.

Is there anything on the completed page I need to re-word or explain in more detail?

As previously, please post all feedback here rather than on the draft page itself.

#documention, #theme

esmi 12:00 pm on March 5, 2013
Tags: ,   

Accessibility for Theme Developers

As part of the larger WordPress documentation project, I’ve put together a very rough first draft of an accessibility section for the theme developers’ handbook. It still needs a lot of fleshing out as I’m approaching this from the perspective of someone who doesn’t know anything about web 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). So I feel that we need to not only tell theme developers what to do but how and why.

That said, is the draft missing anything major — bearing in mind that we do not want to overwhelm theme developers?

#feedback, #theme

esmi 12:08 pm on January 24, 2013
Tags: animation, sound   

Don’t “Let It Snow ” How Autoplays Can…

Don’t “Let It Snow.” How Autoplays Can Disable Visitors to Your Website

#animation, #sound

esmi 3:12 pm on January 15, 2013
Tags: ,   

Aaron Jorbin is suggesting that the new Twenty…

Aaron Jorbin is suggesting that the new Twenty Thirteen should be designed and built “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) first”. He outlines exactly what he means by this in What I want to see in the Twenty Thirteen theme. I think this is an initiative we should all support 100%.

#theme, #twentythirteen

esmi 1:14 pm on September 27, 2012  

Accessibility for Non-Technical Site Owners

As part of the new User handbook being created over at
Supporting Everything WordPress, I’ve put together an introduction to web accessibility.

This is intended to be far less technical and in-depth than its companion page in the Codex. The intent is to get site authors thinking about how they add content rather than just the final look of their pages.

On that basis, I’ve just focused on using headings, images and links as well as general readability.

esmi 10:28 am on May 4, 2012  

http blog rrwd nl 2012 03 23 how…

How accessible is the WordPress CMS for a blind content manager

esmi 1:36 pm on May 3, 2012
Tags: 3.3.2   

Some interesting issues brought up by a blind…

Some interesting issues brought up by a blind user on the wordpress,org support forums: https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-dantotube-some-accessibility-fix-suggestions

#3-3-2