Get involved

Are you interested in joining the Make WordPress 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? Or are you just interested in finding out what the Make WordPress Accessibility Team does?

This page explains a bit about the Team, and how you can help by getting involved.

Who are we?

Members of the Make WordPress Accessibility Team are volunteers working for the continued improvement of accessibility within WordPress for people with disabilities. Our work focuses both on the themes that power WordPress websites and also within the admin and editing screens used by site administrators.

Contrary to what some people think we’re not all techies, and we feel that everyone who is connected with accessibility has something useful to contribute. We’re especially keen to hear from people who are regular users of 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 (AT) as your perspectives can be especially valuable when we need to test out accessibility fixes applied to WordPress.

Each new version of WordPress brings accessibility improvements. The more discussion and testing we can do, the faster that rate of change can be.

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What can you do?

If you want to contribute, there are several ways. Join one of our working groups outlined below by contacting the point person in the #accessibility channel on 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/..

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Design Working Group

We find and review design accessibility-related issues, write and discuss tickets on core trac and write code patches for WordPress coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress..

Contact: Needed!

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General Working Group

We find any accessibility-related issues that do not fit into the remit of the other working groups on core Trac for the 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/ core repo. We need developers who want to help with:

  • Writing patches for accessibility tracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. tickets
  • Give code examples for trac tickets (the expected output)
  • Help with the discussion & testing of possible solutions

Take a look at the overview of accessibility tickets and take your pick.

Contact: Joe Dolson (@joedolson)

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Documentation Working Group

We write documentation about accessibility in our Handbook and on other relevant places on WordPress.org. This is work in process and we need people to:

  • Provide links to good resources
  • Write explanations and general documentation
  • Write code examples

Contact: Maja Benke (@Travel_girl)

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Gutenberg Working Group

We review 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/ accessibility-related issues, write and discuss tickets on GitHub and write code patches. We need people who know how to test for accessibility and/or use assistive technology to test existing and new functionality.

  • Testing existing patches for trac tickets
  • Gutenberg plugin (the 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 where new functionality for Full Site Editing and the 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. Editor is added)

Contact: Needed!

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Media Working Group

We find media accessibility-related issues, write and discuss or patch tickets on core trac for the WordPress.org core repo.

Contact: Joe Dolson (@joedolson)

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Meta Working Group

We find accessibility issues, write and discuss tickets on meta trac and code patches for the website network at WordPress.org and WordPress.tv.

Contact: Joe Dolson (@joedolson)

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Themes Working Group

We review themes for the WordPress.org repo labelled with the accessibility-ready tag, new core themes, and review of the WordCamp themes and help with fixing the accessibility.

Contact: Carolina Nymark (@poena)

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Need more info?

For any other questions and/or suggestions go to #accessibility channel on Slack and pingPing The act of sending a very small amount of data to an end point. Ping is used in computer science to illicit a response from a target server to test it’s connection. Ping is also a term used by Slack users to @ someone or send them a direct message (DM). Users might say something along the lines of “Ping me when the meeting starts.” any of the contacts mentioned above.

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How do you get in touch?

We have a number of communication channels where you can reach out to us and contribute your thoughts and ideas. Choose the one that works best for you.

  • Updates on our meetings and discussions are posted to our blog. WordPress developers also post tips and questions here. To reply to posts you’ll need to log in to wordpress.org. If you don’t have a wordpress.org username you can register at the WordPress Support page.
  • The best way to contact us is in the Slack #accessibility channel.
    • We have a weekly online bug scrub meeting in the #accessibility channel on Slack every Friday at 15:00 UTC where we gather to discuss and triage pending issues.
    • We have a bi-weekly online meeting in the #accessibility channel on Slack the first and third Fridays at 16:00 UTC where we discuss topics and progress in real-time. Everyone is welcome to attend! Please read about joining Slack.
  • If you’re a Twitter user contact us via the @WPAccessibility account.

We hope to hear from you soon. Come and help make WordPress more accessible for everyone. And if you’ve got some ideas about how we could better reach out to people, we’d love to hear those too.

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