Recap of February 14, 2017 Meeting

Slack log (requires 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/. login to view. Set one up if you don’t have a Slack account).

Lesson Plan Updates

• @juliekuehl will work on the theme internationalization plan
• @vmarie will work on the theme documentation plan, @chanthaboune will be a resource as this plan is written
• @asathoor will work on a basic WordPress coding standardsWordPress Coding Standards The Accessibility, PHP, JavaScript, CSS, HTML, etc. coding standards as published in the WordPress Coding Standards Handbook. May also refer to The collection of PHP_CodeSniffer rules (sniffs) used to format and validate PHP code developed for WordPress according to the PHP coding standards. plan, @pbarthmaier will be a resource as this plan is written

Copyediting Updates

• @donkiely finished copyediting the template tour plan and is currently working on copyediting the WooCommerce plan
• @skarjune finished copyediting the widgetWidget A WordPress Widget is a small block that performs a specific function. You can add these widgets in sidebars also known as widget-ready areas on your web page. WordPress widgets were originally created to provide a simple and easy-to-use way of giving design and structure control of the WordPress theme to the user. areas plan and it is ready for testing.

Testing Updates

• @melindahelt tested the accessibility plan in Pittsburgh and it garnered some great feedback.

From @melindahelt: We had 5 in attendance. No real theme developers, so I presented the same information but highlighted the user side of the application (selecting H1, H2 in editor vs coding into a theme).

Overall, the content was great, but it did feel a little basic for a “theme” lesson plan.

We did have a blind software developer attendee who came specifically to learn more about WordPress. We took advantage of having a subject matter expert and launched into a larger discussion/Q&A after the presentation, which was enjoyed by all.

One specific suggestion from the software developer was to include at least a mention of form 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). Even though this is just a taste of accessibility, that’s an area where things can go wrong very quickly and a form can be completely un-accessable to screen readers.

A second attendee sent me the following after our meeting:
1) A skip navigation link.
Once someone has screen read the navigation/menu a number of times they no longer need to hear it. Insert near the top of the htmlHTML HTML is an acronym for Hyper Text Markup Language. It is a markup language that is used in the development of web pages and websites. a link <a class=”screen-reader-tex­t skip-link” href=”#MainContent” title=”Skip to content”>Skip to content</a>, and then just before the content <a name=”maincontent” id=”maincontent”><­/a>
See http://webaim.org/techniques/skipnav/­ for a more detailed explanation.

2) Include an audio file of a screen reader reading an html page.
Perhaps done by having the page with an audio button, so the user can see what the screen reader is reading.
I was already thinking a little bit about suggestion #2. We talked about screen readers and the blind developer offered to do a demo for us some day. But, perhaps a video/audio clip showing a screen reader as it navigates through a page would be a helpful resource. I know there’s way to turn that on with some operating systems, but having something ready to go for instructors would be helpful.

• Given this feedback, we talked about expanding the plan to have a separate plan for users and one for theme developers. We also talked about pushing this out into a full workshop and will talk about this on the blog and in next week’s meeting.

Other Things

• @donkiely noticed that the Storefront theme used in the WooCommerce plan is not included in the style guide. We decided to change the style guide to say that Storefront is “approved” for WooCommerce lesson plans, but to make sure that people know that other themes can be used with WooCommerce. We also double checked that Storefront is GPLGPL GPL is an acronym for GNU Public License. It is the standard license WordPress uses for Open Source licensing https://wordpress.org/about/license/. The GPL is a ‘copyleft’ license https://www.gnu.org/licenses/copyleft.en.html. This means that derivative work can only be distributed under the same license terms. This is in distinction to permissive free software licenses, of which the BSD license and the MIT License are widely used examples. compliant.