Nasim Miah 1:56 pm on October 4, 2025
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Accessibility Team Meeting Notes: October 02, 2025

On Thursday, October 2, 2025 at 11:00 PM GMT+8, a team meeting started in #accessibility facilitated by @muddassirnasim. You can read the full transcript or see the meeting agenda.

Biweekly Team Meeting Time Update

The bi-weekly chat meeting time has changed to alternate Thursdays at 15:00 UTC, and the meeting calendar is also updated.

Bug Scrub Schedule for WordPress 6.9

The bug scrub schedule for WordPress 6.9 has been prepared for its upcoming release.

Updates from working groups

Design

@joedolson reported that the admin redesign is officially no longer part of the 6.9 roadmap, so it will not be an immediate concern. This outcome was largely expected.

There will also not be a new default theme in this release cycle, which means design needs are relatively light.

Documentation

@rianrietveld reported that the WP Knowledge Base is now ready for contributions 🎉. All 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) content from the current handbook has been copied into wpaccessibility.org, and placeholder pages have been created for new content. The How to contribute pages are finished, including information for contributors who don’t work with 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 be the repository owner. https://github.com/. A tracking issue is available with details on what still needs to be written.

Rian will write the web form documentation herself, as she has permission to use materials written for the Dutch government. Level Level, a Dutch WordPress agency specializing in accessibility, will conduct an official 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/.-EM audit on wpaccessibility.org at the beginning of November, with the goal of having all accessibility issues fixed by then. Contributors are encouraged to pick tasks from the projectboard Wp A11y Docs, but should only contribute on topics they know well, as AI is not yet reliable in accessibility.

For October, @rianrietveld will start writing content on web forms. @aialvi will work on migrating the current handbook to a new GitHub repository on github.com/wordpress. @joedolson and @1fixdotio will focus on the remaining issues in the website itself.

General

@joedolson reported that we are just under three weeks away from 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. 1 of WordPress 6.9. There are 19 tickets still in the milestone, including five enhancements/features that need to be committed before beta. So far, 25 tickets have been completed for this milestone.

All enhancement and feature tickets were scrubbed on Tuesday and are in good shape, with most looking plausible to complete. However, a few are at risk. Ticket #48655 has had only minimal progress with some initial research, and ticket #49876 has seen no recent involvement from its contributor, meaning significant work is still needed.

Overall, the milestone is in good shape despite these concerns.

Gutenberg

@joedolson reported that several major features are in progress that are important for accessibility, including the Icons 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., Tab block, Accordion block, and Block Commenting. He has reviewed the Icons block, Accordion block, and Block Commenting, but has not yet had time to review the Tabs block.

Feedback on the Accordion block and Block Commenting is in good shape. However, the Icons block has been shifting directions frequently, and accessibility feedback has not yet been addressed. Joe plans to review the Tabs block this week and will revisit the Icons block to confirm whether his earlier feedback is still relevant after the changes.

There may be additional issues, but these are the main updates at this stage.

Media

@joedolson reported that testing on ticket #63895 is in progress, but more image sources are needed to ensure thorough results. In particular, images from major stock photo sites such as Shutterstock, Adobe Stock, Getty Images, iStock, and Alamy would be helpful. Contributors who have access to new images from these sources are encouraged to share them with @saj1ad, who is collecting them.

This ticket is not currently set for the 6.9 milestone but could be included if these issues are addressed in time.

Themes

@joedolson noted that @amberhinds is working on the theme accessibility ready guide. However, with WP Accessibility Day happening in less than two weeks, it is unlikely that there will be updates on this work until November.

@joedolson also mentioned that it may be difficult for him to attend the next meeting, since Accessibility Day will be ending just as the meeting begins.

NOTE: If you’d like to have a topic added to the agenda for our next meeting, please mention it in the comments on an upcoming agenda.

Thank you, @krupajnanda for the pre-publish review.

#accessibility, #meeting-notes

Nasim Miah 12:01 pm on October 2, 2025
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Accessibility Team Meeting Agenda: Oct 02, 2025

This is the proposed agenda for the weekly 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 meeting on Thursday, October 02, 2025, 15:00 UTC

  • Bug Scrub Schedule for WordPress 6.9

Updates from the working group

  • Design
  • Documentation
  • General
  • 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/
  • Media
  • 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.
  • Themes

Open floor

If you want to have a topic added to the agenda, please mention it in the comments of this post.

The Accessibility Team bug scrub is every Tuesday at 15:00 UTC, held in the #accessibility channel on the Make WordPress 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/. (registration required).

#accessibility, #agenda

Rian Rietveld 6:16 am on September 30, 2025
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WP A11y Docs update September 2025

This update informs you about:

  • The Knowledge Base is ready to contribute.
  • Issues on 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 be the repository owner. https://github.com/ with what needs to be written or reviewed.
  • The work planned for October 2025.
  • How you can help.

Knowledge Base is ready to contribute

In September we made the website wpaccessibility.org ready to contribute. All 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) content from the current handbook is copied into this website. Also new placeholder pages are made, for new content.

Yoren Chang @1fixdotio worked hard to create a preview option for pull requests for the site, so everyone can review proposed content without needing a local installLocal Install A local install of WordPress is a way to create a staging environment by installing a LAMP or LEMP stack on your local computer.. She is really amazing.

The How to contribute pages are written, also for contributors who don’t work with GitHub and just want to write or review.

GitHub issues with what needs to be written or reviewed

Rian wrote issues on GitHub for each documentation page belonging to Standards and best practice. For review and rewrite of the content. Each issues is labeled by topic.

For example the page Headings in the content now has an alert, about what needs be done with the content and a link to the related GitHub issue.

How can you help?

On How to contribute you can read the different ways to contribute to this project. If you want to help writing, pick an issue from the list of Todo issues on the projectboard Wp A11y Docs. Only contribute if you know the topic well or have good resources to share.

Note: Please write the content yourself and use AI only to translate or to check the quality of your English.

Plans for October

@rianrietveld will start writing content for the Knowledge Base, now everything is mapped out. She will also give presentations about the project at the WPMeetup020 (Amsterdam) and WPMeetup030 (Utrecht). You can help her by sponsoring Rian’s time and expenses.

@Aminul will work on the migrationMigration Moving the code, database and media files for a website site from one server to another. Most typically done when changing hosting companies. of the current handbook to a new Github repo accessibility-team-handbook on github.com/wordpress. Only the Accessibility Team related info will stay into that handbook.

@joedolson and @1fixdotio work on the remaining issues in wpaccessibility.org itself.

#accessibility, #make-wordpress-org-updates, #wp-a11y-docs

Krupa Nanda 9:16 am on September 23, 2025
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Accessibility Team Meeting Notes: September 18, 2025

On Thursday, September 18, 2025, at 15:00 UTC, a team meeting started in #accessibility facilitated by @krupajnanda. You can read the full transcript or see the meeting agenda.

Biweekly Team Meeting Time Update

The bi-weekly chat meeting time has changed to alternate Thursdays at 15:00 UTC, and the meeting calendar is also updated.

Bug Scrub Schedule for WordPress 6.9

The bug scrub schedule for WordPress 6.9 has been prepared for its upcoming release.

Announcing the CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. Program Team

 The recent launch of the Core Program team, which is an expansion of the previous Core AI Team program model. 

Updates from working groups

Documentation

@rianrietveld reported that the team has been working to make wpaccessibility.org ready for contributions. They have copied all 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) content from the current handbook into the new site and created placeholder pages for new content. @1fixdotio has implemented a preview option for Pull Requests so contributors can review proposed content without a local installLocal Install A local install of WordPress is a way to create a staging environment by installing a LAMP or LEMP stack on your local computer..

@rianrietveld also suggested including more people to work on the content of the documentation, and provides a list of Todo issues for people to contribute to, but cautions that contributors should only work on topics they know well, as AI is not yet very good at accessibility.

Aminul will work on the migrationMigration Moving the code, database and media files for a website site from one server to another. Most typically done when changing hosting companies. of the current handbook to a new 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 be the repository owner. https://github.com/ repo, accessibility-team-handbook

Only the Accessibility Team-related info will stay in that handbook.

General

@joedolson reported that @alh0319 raised several new tickets that were reviewed in the bug scrub last week.

Gutenberg

@joedolson has raised comments on the Icon 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. and Block Commenting in 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/, and needs to review the Tab block and Accordion block.

Media

@joedolson reopened the discussion on whether to import alt text from image metadata, noting the pros and cons both.

Meta

Updated the Current Release tracking document.

Themes

@alh0319 will be working on converting existing documents into markdown and adding them to a repository in the WP Accessibility organisation so that we can coordinate with other docs processes.

NOTE: If you’d like to have a topic added to the agenda for our next meeting, please mention it in the comments on an upcoming agenda.

Thank you, @muddassirnasim, for the pre-publish review.

#accessibility, #meeting-notes

Krupa Nanda 5:26 am on September 18, 2025
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Accessibility Team Meeting Agenda: Sep 18, 2025

This is the proposed agenda for the weekly 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 meeting on Thursday, September 18, 2025 at 08:30 PM GMT+5:30

  • Biweekly Team Meeting Time Update
  • Bug Scrub Schedule for WordPress 6.9
  • Announcing the CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. Program Team

Updates from the working group

  • Design
  • Documentation
  • General
  • 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/
  • Media
  • 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.
  • Themes

Open floor

If you want to have a topic added to the agenda, please mention it in the comments of this post.

The Accessibility Team bug scrub is every Tuesday at 15:00 UTC, held in the #accessibility channel on the Make WordPress 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/. (registration required).

#accessibility, #agenda

Krupa Nanda 12:28 pm on September 9, 2025
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Accessibility Team Meeting Notes: September 03, 2025

On Wednesday, September 03, 2025 at 15:00 UTC, team meeting started in #accessibility facilitated by @krupajnanda. You can read the full transcript or see the meeting agenda.

New Team Reps

@krupajnanda and @thisisyeasin are selected as 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 Reps, and @muddassirnasim joined the team to contribute and gain experience in the role.

Accessibility Team Meeting Schedule

The team discussed finding the best meeting time that works across different groups, with @joedolson and the other team reps working to propose options for a vote. The new meeting time is to be announced soon!

Updates from working groups

Design

  • @joedolson shared that the design working group’s main focus is the admin redesign, which is a large and complex project that’s difficult to track. He emphasised the importance of reviewing new interfaces for accessibility since current work is mostly limited to design proposals. He also pointed out that specific areas, such as 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. Commenting, need more design attention and shared a related GitHub issue for reference.

Documentation

  • @rianrietveld and @joedolson are working on new Accessibility documentation, which can be followed on the make/accessibility blog with the hashtag #wp-a11y-docs. They are getting more contributors to help with this effort.

General

  • @joedolson reported on progress with coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. tickets, noting that 28 tickets were assigned to the 6.9 milestone, 7 were punted due to inactivity, and 18 have been committed. He also introduced a large patch on #40428 ticket related to hiding CSSCSS CSS is an acronym for cascading style sheets. This is what controls the design or look and feel of a site.-generated content from assistive technologies and requested testing support.
  • Joe shared that he audited the WordPress admin for CSS-generated content issues, made changes to ensure dashicons selectors use generated empty alternatives, and emphasised the need to verify there are no visual differences in updated code. @krupajnanda suggested a potential “call for testing” post and requested instructions on how to test, to which Joe confirmed he would prepare guidance.

Gutenberg Team

  • @joedolson shared that the 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/ items and the implementation of the Lightbox in Galleries are the most relevant things that need testing.

Media

  • @joedolson mentioned he had a discussion point but preferred to defer it to the next meeting due to time constraints. He requested adding “Discuss integration of media metadata sourced alt text” to the next meeting’s agenda.

Meta

  • No updates were reported.

Themes

  • @joedolson reported that work is still ongoing to complete the accessibility-ready themes documentation, with Amber Hinds set to follow up on that.

Open Floor

  • Nothing major was discussed during the open floor.

NOTE: If you’d like to have a topic added to the agenda for our next meeting, please mention it in the comments on an upcoming agenda.

Thank you, @muddassirnasim, for the pre-publish review.

#accessibility, #meeting-notes

Krupa Nanda 6:08 am on September 2, 2025
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Accessibility Team Meeting Agenda: Sep 03, 2025

This is the proposed agenda for the weekly 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 meeting on Wednesday, September 3, 2025 at 08:30 PM GMT+5:30

  • Congratulate new team reps
  • Team Meeting schedule

Updates from the working group

  • Design
  • Documentation
  • General
  • 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/
  • Media
  • 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.
  • Themes

Open floor

If you want to have a topic added to the agenda, please mention it in the comments of this post.

The Accessibility Team bug scrub is every Tuesday at 15:00 UTC.

This meeting is held in the #accessibility channel on the Make WordPress 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/. (registration required).

#accessibility, #agenda

Rian Rietveld 7:13 am on August 29, 2025
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Update project WP A11y Docs August 2025

How’s the work going on the documentation for WordPress about 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) (WP A11yAccessibility 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) Docs).

This update informs you about:

  • the brainstorm session about the content;
  • new contributors that joined in;
  • the work planned for September 2025;
  • how you can help.

Note: The new website for the Knowledge Base is stil in its set up phase: content needs to be added, accessibility issues need to be fixed. So we will not publish the URLURL A specific web address of a website or web page on the Internet, such as a website’s URL www.wordpress.org here yet, but if you want to see the progress, please visit the GitHub repo wp-a11y-docs and follow the link mentioned there.

Brainstorm session about the content

Paul van Buuren, Annelies Verhelst, Wendie Huis in't Veld , Savi Sinnema, Caitlin de Rooij, Johan Huijkman and Rian Rietveld proudly standing before a wall of post-its.

In our previous update we shared the plans for the setup of the Knowledge Base. In Phase 1 we are going to gather all information about accessibility for people that use or build for WordPress and add that to website.

But how to organise that the best way? With a group of seven people, involved in WordPress and/or accessibility, we brainstormed about this for an afternoon. Resulting in a wall full of Post-its.

Thank you Paul van Buuren (@paulvanbuuren), Annelies Verhelst (@anneliesjenl), Wendie Huis in’t Veld (@dolgelukkig), Savi Sinnema, Caitlin de Rooij and Johan Huijkman!

The main conclusions where:

  • There needs to be a section about how to start, where to begin if you are new to accessibility and have no clue where to start.
  • To help users get to the knowledge they need, a reading guide is necessary. Per target group about what they need to read and where to find it. Content must be published once, but the way to get there can differ.
  • How to test was the most requested topic in the survey “Which WP accessibility documentation do you need”. There must be dedicated menu item with how to and checklists.
  • Each of the “Topics” with a “Standards and best practice” menu item will also have a “how to test” section.
  • The point of this Knowledge base is not to rewrite all the content there is out there but to write down what’s important in this context and link to reliable resources.

You can find the full report of the brainstorm session in the Google Doc: Brainstorm session WP A11y Docs.

New contributors join in

Kudos to Yoren Chang (@yoren) for making it possible to preview pull requests for the website in 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 be the repository owner. https://github.com/ pages. Annelies Verhelst is helping with content reviews. Gary Jones (@garyj) set up the rights for the wp-a11y-docs repo and helps with pull requests. The NL Design System gave permission to translate Dutch content into English and publish it on the Knowledge Base.

Work planned for September 2025

  • Copy all accessibility information from the current handbook to the new website.
  • Move the info that needs to stay in the current handbook to a repo on the WordPress account and publish the handbook from there.
  • Work on extending the content in the Knowledge Base.
  • Fix the accessibility issues on the website.

You can follow the work in our GitHub Project board.

How you can help

There are several ways you can help this project:

  • Pick an issue from the Todo column and work on it. Please comment with the issue that you want to do this work.
  • Review a pull request from the PRs in review column . With the description of the pull request there is always a link to a preview, so you don’t have to dig into the code. Add your review as a comment with the pull request.
  • Sponsor Rian’s time and expenses, at the moment 25% of her time is sponsored.
  • Read through the content that is already published and let us know what you think.
  • Follow the accessibility-docs 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/. channel on wordpress.slack.com.

#accessibility, #make-wordpress-org-updates, #wp-a11y-docs

Nazmul Hasan Robin 4:13 pm on August 19, 2025
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Accessibility Team Rep Elections – Voting Now Open

Voting Period: August 19, 16:00 UTC – August 26, 16:00 UTC

Nominations for 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) Team RepTeam Rep A Team Rep is a person who represents the Make WordPress team to the rest of the project, make sure issues are raised and addressed as needed, and coordinates cross-team efforts. are now closed. Thank you to everyone who participated in nominating and supporting the process — it’s wonderful to see such engagement. You can see the full list of nominees and their nominations in the Call for Team Reps.

We’ve received 5 nominations:

You can learn more about the nominees in this Slack thread

Voting is now open to select 2 team reps for the next one year. Please cast your vote using this Google Form: Vote Here

Note: You may vote for up to two candidates.

#team-reps

Rian Rietveld 11:05 am on August 8, 2025
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Update project WP A11y Docs July 2025

In June, Joe Dolson (@joedolson) and Rian Rietveld (@rianrietveld) started the project to update and extend documentation for WordPress about 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 now abbreviate the project as “WP A11yAccessibility 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) Docs”.

This update informs you about:

  • how the documentation will be set up;
  • the work we did up to now;
  • what we are going to do next;
  • how you can help.

Setup of the documentation

The last month we talked with many people in and outside the WP community about the best way to share a11y (accessibility) knowledge in a sustainable way. We came to the following setup.

Phase 1

In a dedicated website WP Accessibility Knowledge Base we gather all information about accessibility for people that use or build for WordPress. In this site we add content and figure out what the best way is to provide the WP community with the best a11y info.

The current Accessibility Handbook will be renamed Accessibility Team Handbook.
And will contain only information about the team itself, how to contribute and when the meetings are (etc). The information about accessibility itself moves to the WP Accessibility Knowledge Base.

Phase 2

On developers.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/ a new section will be created, the Accessibility Handbook where the info for developers and designers will be added, taken from WP Accessibility Knowledge Base. This section will live as a repo on the WordPress 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 be the repository owner. https://github.com/ account.

The setup of using first a dedicated website to write and to find out the best way to organise content and later add relevant content to the developers handbook, is discussed in the Documentation Team Slack channel. Thank you Jon (@kenshino) and Milana (@milana_cap) for your feedback.

Work in July and August ’25

We created a website for the WP Accessibility Knowledge Base. The website is build in Jekyll using GitHub pages which makes it easy for contributors to add content in markdown as open sourceOpen Source Open Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL. project.

The related Github repo is wp-a11y-docs.

Note: at the moment the content contains only placeholder text, from August 11 on we are going to fill that site with real content.

What’s next?

On August 20, Rian will host a brainstorm afternoon about which content we need to provide for the WP Accessibility Knowledge Base and which content is useful for developers.wordpress.org. And also about how to organise the content in a way people can easily find what they need. This will be with people from the Dutch WordPress community and Accessibility community.

After that session Rian will create issues on GitHub for everyone that wants to help to pick up.

How you can help?

Pick an issue from the wp-a11y-docs/issues! After August 21 there wil be many to choose from.

#accessibility, #make-wordpress-org-updates, #wp-a11y-docs