Category Archives: Status Updates

Joe Dolson 6:25 pm on August 7, 2017  

This week in WordPress Accessibility, August 7th, 2017

Transcript of the meeting

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) of Select2

WooCommerce makes use of Select2, and has forked Select2 to create a more accessible version. Select2 has not been updated since the beginning of the year, and none of the accessibility pull requests made by @afercia had been incorporated into the repository. Because of this, WooCommerce elected to fork the project so that they could make better progress. The new fork lives at WooCommerce/SelectWoo.

Select2 was of interest to the accessibility team a couple of years ago as a possible solution to some significant performance problems relating to multisiteMultisite Multisite is a WordPress feature which allows users to create a network of sites on a single WordPress installation. Available since WordPress version 3.0, Multisite is a continuation of WPMU or WordPress Multiuser project. WordPress MultiUser project was discontinued and its features were included into WordPress core. Advanced Administration Handbook -> Create A Network. networks and sites with many users. However, the project had a lot of accessibility issues that made it non-viable for coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. usage.

@claudiulodro attended our meeting as a representative from WooCommerce. He’s been working on integrating accessibility in SelectWoo. He will set up a test page with sample usages of SelectWoo and prepare a list of known issues that he would like assistance with so that the accessibility team can effectively provide feedback. Feedback should be provided via comments on the Accessibility review thread, as GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged by the repository owner. https://github.com/ doesn’t allow people to raise issues on a fork.

@claudiulodro will make a post about SelectWoo on the WooCommerce blog later this week.

If we determine that SelectWoo provides a viable mechanism to address issues in WordPress core, we will comment to that effect on pertinent tickets within TracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/..

Accessibility Handbook and Documentation

@samikeijonen gave a report on the meeting to discuss accessibility documentation on 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 in the accessibility team handbook. See the WordPress Accessibility documentation meeting notes for details.

The documentation subgroup requested a native English speaker to review documents as they are completed, as the majority of the team are non-native speakers but writing in English. @joedolson agreed to do that.

Accessibility documentation that exists as specific guidelines for developers, such as the theme accessibility review documents, needs to stay where it is. In order to avoid duplication, the team handbook will link across to those documents when that content serves the purpose needed effectively.

Open Floor

@afercia encouraged anybody who’ll be in Europe in November to propose to talk at 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. Milano (Novermber 18-19).

Trisha Salas 6:08 pm on May 19, 2017
Tags:   

The Last 3 Weeks in WPa11y!

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) Tickets in 4.8

These are the current accessibility related tickets slated for the 4.8 release:

  • #35566 removes the title attribute in the tag cloud widgetWidget A WordPress Widget is a small block that performs a specific function. You can add these widgets in sidebars also known as widget-ready areas on your web page. WordPress widgets were originally created to provide a simple and easy-to-use way of giving design and structure control of the WordPress theme to the user.
  • #38768 adds the site title as the alt attribute to the custom logo

WordPress 4.8 introduces a few new media widgets as well as the ‘Nearby Events’ widget. Testing should continue to be sure that new accessibility issues aren’t introduced.

Future Releases

If you would like to have an impact on future WordPress releases join us during our bug scrubs! During bug scrubs we go through the “awaiting review” and “future release” reports.
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/ Editor

The Gutenberg Editor is slated for a big reveal at 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.
Let’s keep testing for accessibility related issues as development continues.

You can find installation instructions here: https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md

Note that it is not a conventional pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party. so there are some specific steps to follow.
Accessibility Tasks

There are several ongoing tasks with the goal to improve accessibility in the Admin area.

  • Proximity
  • Add widgets screen
  • Menu screen

Widgets and menu screen

It’s not a secret that there are many issues in the Add Widgets and Menu screens. What to do? @juliemoynat has suggested some improvements in this ticket: https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/40677

Proximity

In web design, the principle of proximity states that related items should be placed close together. By the same token, if things are spaced farther apart they appear to have less relation to one another.

This principle is so powerful, that it overrides similarity of color, shape, and other factors that might differentiate a group of objects.

Proximity is especially critical for users with low vision. It will even be addressed in the next draft of the 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/. guidelines! https://w3c.github.io/low-vision-a11y-tf/requirements.html

An initial ticket has been created, feel free to join in! https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/40822

#weekly-meetings

Joseph Karr O'Connor 5:03 am on August 13, 2015
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Team Chat Summary August 10, 2015

New Structure Proposed

Rian Rietveld wrote a proposal on how to structure our work better and plan ahead longer and we discussed it. What follows is examples from the proposal.

Goals and Issues

This will be a separate page on make/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) and also a main menu item. It gives an overview of our goals for the accessibility of WordPress, the work we (want to) do, how this is organized, how we test, a roadmap for the next year and how we track the progress of issues we are working on. An example of the roadmap for release 4.4:

Release 4.4 (December 2015, Scott Taylor)
  • Finish still open issues focus from 4.3
  • Semantic heading structure Admin
  • The customizerCustomizer Tool built into WordPress core that hooks into most modern themes. You can use it to preview and modify many of your site’s appearance settings.
  • Handbook
  • Twenty Sixteen (?)

Central Ideas

Some central ideas also included in the proposal are keyboard focus, work on the handbook, color contrast, system to better follow tickets including splitting up tickets among team members on which to concentrate, and continue to develop code pattern library. Much more is included in the proposal and for now we will continue to work on the proposal to make it a more formal document to cover our activities over the next year.

We also talked about the fact that having a planning document to refer to does not obviate the need to address all new features since there is a tight turn around towards the end of a cycle because that’s when the features going into the release are announced. If we don’t follow all new features we might miss one or more that advance to release at the very end.

When we have it shaped up we will add the planning documentation to this blog in the form of pages and sub-pages to make it a community resource.

#accessibility-team-meetup, #team-reps, #weekly-meetings

Joseph Karr O'Connor 8:45 am on July 8, 2015
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Accessibility Team Meeting July 6, 2015

H1 in the admin

For 4.3 there will be an H1 in the admin. #31650: Missing H1 heading in the admin. Assistive technologyAssistive technology Assistive technology is an umbrella term that includes assistive, adaptive, and rehabilitative devices for people with disabilities and also includes the process used in selecting, locating, and using them. Assistive technology promotes greater independence by enabling people to perform tasks that they were formerly unable to accomplish, or had great difficulty accomplishing, by providing enhancements to, or changing methods of interacting with, the technology needed to accomplish such tasks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assistive_technology users look for the H1 for way finding. Though there is the page title, when AT separates out elements such as links, lists, and headings, the info needs to be there too. Two weeks ago we ran this by Mika Epstein @Ipstenu and she helped us understand heading levels and plugins. Mika spot checked some plugins and it showed that they are using H2 and her opinion is that “we can post about that in make/plugins to try and spread the word.” Thanks Mika. More work will be done on the rest of the hierarchy.

Main Open Tickets

We also briefly discussed:

#accessibility, #team-reps, #weekly-meetings

Joseph Karr O'Connor 2:38 am on May 2, 2015
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Accessibility Team Update: May 1, 2015

Weekly Meeting Change

This week during the Wednesday meeting we decided that the Monday testing meeting is now where the action is so we decided to stop having the Wednesday meeting. On Monday, May 4, we will all meet in the #accessibility channel in SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/ at 18:00 UTC. We are also using Slack throughout the week to work on tickets and patches, ask questions, and discuss anything that comes up. First register for the WordPress forums and then follow the steps on the WordPress chat instruction page to get set up. Then find your way to #accessibility. See you there!

#team-reps, #weekly-meetings

esmi 1:05 pm on April 12, 2012  

I’ve only just realised that Admin Bar links…

I’ve only just realised that Admin Bar links contain tabindexes. That’s bad enough but they’re not really in an intuitive/logical order. Can they be removed in a future version?

Jen 3:43 pm on November 28, 2011
Tags: 3.3   

WordPress 3.3 is coming up on RC1 meaning…

WordPress 3.3 is coming up on RC1 (meaning it’s close to launch). We tried to catch as many 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) issues as we could, but chances are we missed things. If anyone would be willing to run 3.3 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. through the paces and report back on how it does/what fixes need to be made, that would be great. If you’re not set up with an svn install, you can download the beta tester plugin to put the beta on a test site.

#3-3

Jen 2:32 am on November 28, 2011  

Changed a couple of settings Must fill in…

Changed a couple of settings:

  • Must fill in name and email, but removed the ‘must have previously approved’ setting so now comments go live immediately instead of waiting to be moderated.
  • Close comments on posts older than 14 days old. Comments go unnoticed, and no action gets taken. Hopefully discussions can get to agreement within 2 weeks (well before, if we’re lucky) and the resolution can make its way over to the appropriate tracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. ticket.
Jen 2:11 am on November 28, 2011
Tags: dashboard menu,   

Do people think it is better for the…

Do people think it is better for the dashboard menus down the left side to work as described in A, B, or C:

  • A. Tabbing goes from top-level item to its subs and cycles through them, then proceeds to the next top-level item, etc., and hitting Enter/Return acts as clicking on the link to whatever item you’ve tabbed to; or
  • B. Tabbing goes from top-level item to top-level item, and hitting Enter/Return ‘opens’ the subs and then you can tab through them?
  • C. A more accessible suggestion that we haven’t thought of?

Please leave your vote/suggestion/comments in a reply to this post IF you work professionally in 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) field OR you need to access WordPress without a mouse/trackpad/rollerbar/other mouse-like input device (generally due to disability). If you don’t fit in one of these categories: while your opinion is valuable, it’s not the one we’re looking for at this particular time. So regular designers, developers, and users, please don’t distract from the pros and the target population on this thread. If you are an accessibility pro and have not introduced yourself on this blog before, or a keyboard access/screen reader user, please add a note about your qualifications/experience (for pros) or your typical setup/environment (for users — which screen reader, do you use keyboard shortcuts in addition to tabbing etc) so that we can put your suggestions in context. Thanks.

P.S. Please don’t derail the conversation by using this thread to suggest other features.

#dashboard-menu, #tabbing

esmi 1:53 pm on November 7, 2011
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http wordpress org support topic how to reorder…

https://wordpress.org/support/topic/how-to-reorder-items-in-custom-menu-without-dragging

#jaws-admin