Accessibility Priorities for 4.3

For the development of WordPress 4.3, we’ve got a handful of major issues we want to work on to create a smoother and more predictable experience for users with disabilities.

Reconcile Heading hierarchy throughout admin & clean-up heading contents

#31650: Missing H1 headings in admin (fixed)
#26601: Inappropriate content in headings on admin screens.

Use Semantic elements for non-link links

Tracking ticket: #26504
Individual tickets (so far): #31487, #31476
Related: #26550

Reconcile search methods

WordPress incorporates 5 different search interactions in the admin. For usability, 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 maintenance reasons, this should be made more uniform. We’d like to see this reduced to two basic interactions.

#31818 Uniform Search Form Display/Experience

List table issues

We gathered a ton of data on the List table navigation experience during 4.2, and those are being turned into tickets.

#32028 List table pagination: text improvements for screen readers (fixed)
#32150 List table: better indication for “no taxonomyTaxonomy A taxonomy is a way to group things together. In WordPress, some common taxonomies are category, link, tag, or post format. https://codex.wordpress.org/Taxonomies#Default_Taxonomies.” (fixed)
#32152 List table: Comments column accessibility improvements (fixed)
#32147 List table: headings for pagination and views links
#31654 List tables: Select All shouldn’t be a column headerHeader The header of your site is typically the first thing people will experience. The masthead or header art located across the top of your page is part of the look and feel of your website. It can influence a visitor’s opinion about your content and you/ your organization’s brand. It may also look different on different screen sizes. (fixed)

Color contrast issues in admin:

#31548, #31713, #28599

Improve editor experience:

The editor is the single most frequently used part of most WordPress installations – and the experience with this interface should be more consistent.

#29838: Editor focus order issues.

Throughout the cycle, we’ll also be picking away at the dozens of other smaller tickets we want to fix, but these are large issues that will have a deep impact on WordPress, and will require a community effort to make progress.

#4-3-early, #core-2, #priorities