Get involved

Members of 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 are volunteers working on improvements to accessibility in WordPress for people with disabilities.

Not everybody contributing to WordPress is technically minded, and everyone who is connected with accessibility can contribute to the Accessibility team. We particularly want 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 perspective is especially valuable testing accessibility fixes for WordPress.

The Accessibility team includes coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. committers, developers, testing specialists, content writers, and organizers; it could include you!

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


Join a Working Group

If you want to contribute to WordPress, there are several ways. It’s not just writing code! 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

Coordinate with the WordPress Design team to monitor what kinds of design changes are happening in WordPress and help contribute to keeping accessibility at the forefront in design.

Contact: Needed!

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General Working Group

Monitor the broad accessibility of WordPress core and any areas of WordPress not covered by another working group. Monitors and contributes to tickets in the core Trac. The general team is primarily developers and testers.

  • 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 contribute to Accessibility documentation wherever needed around 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/.

  • Provide links to good resources and verify the existing links
  • 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.

  • Monitor changes to the Editor, both in Full Site Editing and in 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
  • Track goals for future versions of the editor and design changes
  • Keep the team in the loopLoop The Loop is PHP code used by WordPress to display posts. Using The Loop, WordPress processes each post to be displayed on the current page, and formats it according to how it matches specified criteria within The Loop tags. Any HTML or PHP code in the Loop will be processed on each post. https://codex.wordpress.org/The_Loop. when major changes are planned

Contact: Anne McCarthy (@annezazu)

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Media Working Group

Track media accessibility issues, write and discuss or patch tickets on core trac for the WordPress.org core repo. Provide opinions on handling of video and imagery across WordPress.org.

Contact: Joe Dolson (@joedolson)

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Meta Working Group

MetaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. is the infrastructure of WordPress.org and its related sites, including Learn, TV, OpenVerse, and many others. Report and track accessibility issues, discuss tickets on the meta trac or in the WordPress meta Github repositories.

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 provide assistance with accessibility issues.

Contact: Carolina Nymark (@poena)

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Need more info?

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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.

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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How do I get an Accessibility Profile Badge?

The Accessibility Team has both a Contributor badge and a Team badge. The Contributor badge is for anybody who has helped improve the accessibility of any part of the WordPress core ecosystem, including the WordPress.org properties.

Learn how to get a Profile badge for the Accessibility Team.

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