Tag Archives: meeting notes

Joseph Karr O'Connor 4:06 am on September 30, 2013
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Accessibility Team Update: September 25

Most of the time was spent discussing https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/21334 3.7, grahamarmfield->helen, closed, Row actions are not always keyboard accessible. Helen Hou joined us for the discussion.

1. When mouse hovers over a page/post row in main Pages/Posts screen ‘quick links’ appear. Suggesting that they also are made available for keyboard-only users and screen reader users.

2. When using the QuickEdit panel the time/date controls have separate tabindex and no labels. Suggesting that the tabindex be removed from those controls, and that labels be used.

Discussion centered around the need to reduce verbosity for screen reader users, while still making the controls available to them.

It was decided to test the latest build and come back with a recommendation.

#accessibility, #meeting-notes, #team-reps

Joseph Karr O'Connor 3:01 am on September 21, 2013
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Accessibility Team Update: September 18

Cynthia Waddell smiling in front of shelves with law books.

Cynthia Waddell

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) Statement Final Draft

“Accessibility is the degree to which a product, device, service, or environment is available to as many people as possible.” Cynthia Waddell

WordPress is founded on the principles of an inclusive community and democratization of publishing. The development of WordPress, based on standards and best practices, offers a constantly improving environment with flexibility and choice. We promise to always work toward creating an environment accessible to as many people as possible, inclusive of technology and ability.

We want community involvement and welcome feedback. Your comments help us enhance the accessibility of WordPress.

Resources

End Accessibility Statement

Projects To Be Followed

During the remainder of the meeting we discussed the projects we believe should be followed by the WordPress Accessibility Team. We agreed that we have too few people on the team to follow all these projects, but we compiled the following list.

#accessibility, #meeting-notes, #team-reps

Joseph Karr O'Connor 9:34 pm on September 11, 2013
Tags: , meeting notes,   

Meeting September 11, 2013

We edited an 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) statement.

At the head of the statement is a quote by Cynthia Waddell: “Accessibility is the degree to which a product, device, service, or environment is available to as many people as possible.”

[Then comes the statement:]

WordPress is founded on the principles of an inclusive community and democratization of publishing. The development of WordPress, based on standards and best practices, offers a constantly improving environment with flexibility and choice. We promise to always work toward creating an environment accessible to as many people as possible, inclusive of technology and ability.

[The statement is followed by resources and contact information.]

Resources are available if you would like to learn more about WordPress accessibility.

We want community involvement and welcome feedback. Your comments help us enhance the accessibility of WordPress.

[Contact us here, and here, etc.]

#accessibility, #meeting-notes, #team-reps

Jen 6:20 pm on August 21, 2013
Tags: meeting notes   

Meeting Notes from 8/13/13

Sorry for taking so long with these. I got sick last week and lost a few days.

Attendees: Someone from every official product team except theme review and polyglots. Theme folks said the time would be an issue, but no word from polyglots. Will reach out to them to see what’s up, has been no activity here from them in general.

Agenda: Reps/Leads/[Advisors] Roles, Elections/Appointments, Summit Planning, Team Stats, New Contributor Materials, Make.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/ Landing Page

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. Role/Elections

Proposed changes to team reps role/process based on the experiences of the first term:

  • Term of 3 months for a rep rather than 6 months for 2 reps that swap halfway through.
  • Have outgoing rep recommend the next rep, like with release leadRelease Lead The community member ultimately responsible for the Release. on coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.. Recommend to their team, get general acceptance from the team before recommending to team reps. Each team can handle the internal decision process however works best for them (poll, just propose a couple names, ask for volunteers, whatever), but the outgoing team rep will make the decision on the recommendation. Other outgoing team reps would only object to a recommendation if it was someone not active on the team or someone operating outside the general .org rules (someone selling proprietary themes wouldn’t be okay, for example). If a team can’t agree on who to make the rep, the larger team reps group will arbitrate.
  • As before, we are iterating on something that was brand new last time around. It’s all an experiment with good intentions. If something doesn’t work, we can fix it.
  • Next round of rep would be chosen in December. Each team take a week to decide who will go from now until then.

Discussion points:

  • Some felt 3 months too short. Others felt it was a more realistic time commitment.
  • Several team reps dropped out during the course of the six month term this time.
  • Possible lack of continuity with shorter terms something to keep an eye on.
  • What about term limits?
  • Tiny teams that don’t have enough people can’t really rotate very frequently/adhere to term limits.
  • Shorter term makes it possible to share the responsibility among more people, also helping to identify who steps up and is reliable and could be ready for more leadership in areas other than administration.
  • Some people still wanted 2 reps all the time. Main reason for proposing just having one active rep at a time and having a backup that isn’t actively participating in meetings has to do with process management. It was noted that backups should participate in everything so that if they need to step in for the main rep they’ll know what’s going on, but that touches on the problem that reps currently are not really doing the job as originally laid out. Reps should be filling in the whole team regularly on what’s going on with team reps/other teams, so almost any team member should be able to act as a backup if needed without special ramp-up information passing.
  • Some disagreement about what to do re Docs/Support rep(s). Again, slightly misses the idea of a team rep being a conduit/liaison rather than a subject matter expert or lead. Any team rep should be able to represent their team by talking to the people running various projects/components in their team. Some teams will have more disparate subgroups than others. For now, docs and support will have two active. Community team will try to be an example as it grows in the coming term of how the different-projects-in-one-one-team could work.

Lead Role

Sam, Jen, Drew and Pippin agreed on a proposal for creating an official lead role for teams analogous to the lead developer role and separate from team reps, but all agreed to table the discussion until new reps were rolled in. Of note, whatever happens with that, it would not be the job of reps to choose leads, but an internal team matter signed off on by Matt, same as with the core role.

Summit Planning

Going to post on wordpress.org and allow the community to suggest locations. Jen will also do continued research on possible locations. We’ll shoot to choose a place by Sept 15, acknowledging that date can’t be chosen without venue. Shooting for Februaryish or May, depending on location/weather.

Contributor Stats

No specifics here, just a heads up that it’s on Sam’s radar and we’ll need the help of all teams to start gathering useful participation stats so we can watch trends around contributor engagement.

make.wordpress.org home page

Getting worked on, with an upcoming surge (hopefully to launch) during/immediately following WC Birmingham when Jen, Sam, Otto, and others will be together.

Project Queue

Sam published https://make.wordpress.org/meta/project-queue/ to keep track of priorities on .org site projects.

#meeting-notes

Jen 2:49 pm on July 28, 2013
Tags: meeting notes   

Team Rep Dinner Notes

For reference, here are the notes from last night’s 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. dinner.

Combining Teams

Heated discussion about combining teams vs combining blogs re Support/Docs. References to Automattic subteam structure sounded good to some, not to others. In combined team structure, would look at subteams for IRC, video transcription, codex, international forums, etc in addition to existing handbooks and forums groups.

For now, will combine events and outreach as subteams under Community umbrella and will combine blogs, to show what we meant. Support and Docs will combine rep role to provide one update but will not combine blogs at this time. They will try to work on outreach to the invisible subteams above.

Reps vs Leads

Agreement that it’s a murky distinction and that the experienced subject matter experts shouldn’t necessarily be what is basically an admin as well, and that the ‘team rep’ as we set it up might need some revision. Agreement also that the admin role can be a good way to increase a contributor’s responsibility and grow them into a lead.

@jenmylo, @drewapicture, @mordauk, and @samuelsidler will work on a proposal for how to recognize and label the different roles, and will bring it to this group (and Matt) for discussion.

Monthly Chat

Some reps were more interested in this than others, but we’re going to try it. @samuelsidler was volunteered to pick a recurring day/time. We’ll change the day/time every three months so that no one has to wake up at 3am for chat more than a few times.

The Job

Being a rep isn’t just about posting an update (also, reps that haven’t been posting updates, get going), but about bringing news from other teams back to your group and then bringing their response/suggestions/concerns back here, and about working with other team reps when there are cross-group initiatives (docs + pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party review on the plugin dev handbook was one example).

The job description is still at https://make.wordpress.org/updates/team-reps/ below the list of current reps. When we have an agreed-upon proposal for reps/leads, we’ll revise the job description. We’ll try to use fewer words and more bullets so it’s not too much to read.

Summit

Lots of discussion around what/where/when to do with summit, though all agreed we need to do another one. Early 2014 is the target timing. Many locations were discussed, including Tybee, hubs like Atlanta/Boston/Toronto/London/Paris/Chicago, other European cities, South America, Caribbean, Texas, smaller cities. No decision made.

@jenmylo, @siobhan, @samuelsidler, and @aaroncampbell will investigate some of the front-runner locations with regard to travel costs, 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 the cozy factor. General agreement that the cozy factor was worth a little more money and a little more inconvenience in travel if the summit is a few days long. We’ll bring back 2-3 suggestions and take a vote to decide the location/dates.

Elections

We are overdue on elections, but the reps/leads thing should be defined first so people know what they are getting into. Will run elections soon after WCSF to get back on track.

Also-Rans

If any of the team reps who weren’t at the dinner would like to volunteer for the summit research team or the role revision team, let me know.

#meeting-notes