Discussion: Bringing accessibility-first approaches into content development

At WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. US 2023, @jominney, @newcomer22 and team published the Training Team Accessibility Checklist 🎉 I’ve recently been considering how we can bring 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)-first approaches into the team’s content creation/review processes better.

What would it take for the team to be able to say “We’ve given our best effort to ensuring all content on Learn WordPress is accessible” when we relaunch the site with Learning Pathways in July this year? I’ve dropped some thoughts below, but this is just to get the conversation going. Let’s discuss in the comments until March 9th (Friday), and then consider next steps after that.


I noticed the WordPress project’s accessibility statement says:

WordPress aims to make the WordPress Admin and bundled themes fully 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/. 2.0 AA compliant where possible.

  • Question: Is striving for WCAG 2.0 AA compliance a reasonable standard for content on Learn WordPress, too?

The team’s current Accessibility Checklist has some items that go beyond the scope of WCAG 2.0 AA, but is also missing some items within scope. Below is my personal take on what content creators specifically would need to be mindful of in order to create content that is fully WCAG 2.0 AA compliant.

(Note, I’m specifically considering what can be achieved in the content creating process – mostly conducted within the WordPress Editor. There are other coding-related considerations that must be made in the theme etc., which is worth its own separate conversation.)

  • Question: Is the following list an accurate representation of what content creators would need to be mindful of to create WCAG 2.0 AA compliant content?
  1. All non-text content has a text alternative. (Guideline 1.1 – Text Alternatives)
  2. Captions and transcripts are provided for all videos. (Guideline 1.2 – Time-based Media)
  3. Audio description is provided for all prerecorded video content. Or, narration in video content describes all important visual details, including actions, scene changes, and on-screen text. (Guideline 1.2 – Time-based Media)
  4. Instructions do not rely solely on components such as shape, color, size, visual location, orientation, or sound. (Guideline 1.3 – Adaptable)
  5. Color is not used as the only visual means of conveying information, indicating an action, prompting a response, or distinguishing a visual element. (Guideline 1.4 – Distinguishable)
  6. Text and images of text have a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1. (Guideline 1.4 – Distinguishable)
  7. Unless essential, text should be used instead of images of text. (Guideline 1.4 – Distinguishable)
  8. No content flashes more than three times/second. (Guideline 2.3 – Seizures and Physical Reactions)
  9. The purpose of each link can be determined from the link text alone. (Guideline 2.4 – Navigable)
  10. Headings describe topic or purpose. (Guideline 2.4 – Navigable)

Points 3 (audio descriptions for video content) is currently not included in the team’s accessibility checklist.

  • Question: In the context of video content on Learn, what would adding audio description to videos look like? Is it possible to publish videos where all necessary content is included in the narration?

Finally, I think it would be great if we could move the accessibility checklist from being a final check made on content to something embedded in content development and review processes.

  • Question: How can we bring accessibility-first approaches into our content development and review processes?

#accessibility

Brainstorm: What trends about Learn WordPress leaners do we want to observe?

The Learning Pathways project was kicked off after an extensive survey of WordPress users and their needs. It was a step by the Training Team to pivot towards a more data-informed content planning strategy.

In order for the team to continue a data-informed content planning strategy, let’s brainstorm what learner trends we should start observing in order to best serve their needs. In the comments below, please note the following:

  1. What data would be relevant for the Training Team to surface?
  2. How would surfacing that data better serve our learners, team, and community?
  3. What considerations would be needed in order to surface that data?

We’ll close the initial round of comments on February 25th and consider next-steps.

Discussion: Training’s contribution to the 6.5 release (and beyond)

The WordPress 6.5 release squad has been announced. This next release is scheduled for March 26 and now’s a great time for the Training Team to discuss how we’d like to be involved.

Below is my proposal to kick off the discussion. Let’s discuss this in the comments below until February 5th. Team reps will then summarize the discussion by the team meeting that week.

Prioritize Learning Pathways content

The Learning Pathways project is a priority for the Training Team this year, with a scheduled launch for July 2024. Considering the limited number of content creators we have on the team right now, we do not have enough resources to meet that deadline and create a lot of release-related content at the same time.

Proposal around priorities

  • Continue to prioritize developing Learning Pathways content.
  • Identify no more than 3-5 pieces of high-impact content related to the release and clearly list these in the team.
  • Find opportunities to onboard additional content creators who can assist with this content development work.

Modifying 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/ triaging processes

Historically, Training’s focus during releases has included identifying content needing updates as a result of the release. This has been done by reopening GitHub issues and, if the original assignee is unresponsive, re-assigning issues to new assignees.

As the team has started to track and analyze GitHub data (see Training Team 2023 Year In Review), we’re finding this process of reopening issues and changing assignees skews important metrics that represent team health – such as the “time to close” on an issue. To ensure the team can track and report accurate metrics, I propose the following changes.

Proposal around changes to GitHub triage processes

Once again, let’s discuss this in the comments below until February 5th.

#procedures

Training Team 2024 Goals Setting

Another year is starting, and it’s time to set our team goals again! In a similar fashion to last year, we’ll be hosting two synchronous sessions to brainstorm ideas. Anyone is welcome to join either of these sessions.

Before attending, please take some time to review the Training Team’s Team Values. These are our shared values that form the foundation of all we set out to achieve.

The Zoom link will be shared in the #training Slack channel 5 minutes before each session starts. The video recording and outcomes from each session will also be posted below for asynchronous conversation.

Timelines

Training Team 2023 Year-End Review

The end of the year is nearly upon us, which means it’s a good time to review our 2023 goals once more and check in on how we are doing.

Outlined below are the goals we have completed, what is currently in progress, what’s on hold / being re-evaluated, and the details of each goal’s current state.

To date, we have completed 11 goals, while 5 are still in progress and 2 are on hold / being re-evaluated.

You can review our 2023 goals in this Training Team Goals for 2023 post, our our first half year review in the Training Team 2023 Half Year Review post.

✅ = Complete

🚧 = In Progress

🚫 = On Hold / Being Re-evaluated

March to June 2023 – 6 Completed, and 3 In Progress

✅ Create a Learn newsletter for learners

✅ Create a Contributor DayContributor Day Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/ https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/. checklist/template

✅ A fully documented process set up for folks working on content localization

Plan a course for beginner WordPress users

🚧 Plan promotions with the Marketing Team

  • What have we done to progress this goal?

Individual Learner survey (tied to Needs analysis)

🚧 Establish monthly recurring onboarding Online Workshops in different timezones for training team roles

  • To date, we have not been able to consistently offer monthly onboarding sessions for our 5 contributor roles.
  • What’s next?
    • We plan to revisit the onboarding information, especially the content creator side to validate it’s clear and up to date
  • This will carry over to 2024

Create a dev road map for the Learn siteLearn site The Training Team publishes its completed lesson plans at https://learn.wordpress.org/ which is often referred to as the "Learn" site.

🚧 Get involved with the redesign work happening on Learn

July to September 2023 – 4 Completed, 1 In Progress, and 1 On Hold

Release roadmap of new content (that isn’t tied to WP releases/features).

Assess the content that has the largest impact.

🚫 Test out a course creation cohort method that will work as a group to create one course together.

  • Team reps agreed that we should re-evaluate this goal as getting consistent content creators on board should be higher priority

✅ Work more closely with 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 creation accessibility checklist was created in this Training Team Accessibility Checklist handbook page
  • We worked more closely with Accessibility with the addition of WordPress Playground to the Learn WordPress site (see Slack thread)
  • We see this evolving into a new, specific, accessibility goal (Ex. make sure new content on Learn is accessible)

🚧 Figure out a method to manage localized content translation.

  • What have we done to progress this goal?
    • Reached out to 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. re: staging site which is not possible at the moment. Looking into a sandbox site
    • Docs team is also working on localization and we can meet with them to discuss their plan
  • We’d like to revisit this conversation with the team and 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. in Documentation as well since they are also working on localization

✅ Nurturing the Locale Ambassadors program (making sure people who show up have people they can connect with).

October to December 2023 – 1 Completed, 1 In Progress, and 1 On Hold

🚧 Audit Handbook

  • We will be asking for Training Team volunteers to help us take this goal over the finish line in our November 21st meeting.

✅ Plan a structured way to showcase Learn WordPress content.

🚫 Curriculum Advisory Board (working title) planning and outreach.

  • Team reps feel this can be shelved for now as increasing contributor output is higher priority.

We will review our goals in the November 21st team meeting and publish a 2023 goal results post at the end of the year.

#training-notifications