The AccessibilityAccessibilityAccessibility (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 shares their expertise to improve the accessibility of WordPress coreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. and resources.
Ask general questions during the Team Office Hours every Wednesday at 14:00 UTC in the accessibility channel in SlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/..
How do you test the accessibilityAccessibilityAccessibility (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 a web project?
There are many different ways to use the web besides a mouse and a pair of eyes. Users may navigate with only a keyboard or using their voice. For all the different ways to understand and to interact with a website, it is necessary that the page structure, design and code is properly set up.
There are different ways to test the accessibility of the design, code and the content of a website. This page describes which guidelines the WordPress project uses and gives you resources on how to test your work.
You find detailed test information per subject in the handbook pages:
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3CW3CThe World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international community where Member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web standards.https://www.w3.org/.) developed guidelines to safeguard the accessibility of a website: the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines: WCAG. We are currently at version 2.1 Version 2.2 is in draft and due to be finalised in September 2022.
There are 3 levels:
A, basic accessibility
AA, the worldwide standard, also used for government and public service websites
AAA, for dedicated software
For WordPress we test against the WCAG 2.1 AA guidelines.
WebAim is a great resource of information for web accessibility. On that site you can find an accessibility WebAIM checklist, but also a ton of information on all the subjects concerning what is important and what are best practices for a site.