Accessibility Team’s goals for WordPress 5.7 and beyond

After the release of WordPress 5.6 on December 8th, 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 is already at work to plan the next release.

The 5.7 development cycle hasn’t been defined yet, but a tentative release date was set for March, 9th 2021, a bit less than three months from now. This isn’t really a lot of time: after the release of the first 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., only bugs introduced during the relase cycle can be fixed, with no possibility to add new features or enhancements or to fix bugs introduced in WordPress 5.6 or before. Given that some contributors may slow down their activity during alpha because of the holiday season, it’s probably better not to delay further the discussion on possible targets.

Because of this, the Accessibility Team is going to discuss possible goals for the 5.7 release during the next weekly meeting, happening on Friday, December 18, 2020 at 16:00 UTC in the #accessibility channel in the Making 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/. (requires registration).

By that time, you are invited to suggest possible goals as a comment to this post, so that it can be included in the discussion.

Given the team decision to create working groups focusing on specific areas of interest, it’ll be up to each working group to set goals and choose targets for the release, but you’re more than invited to share your ideas, take part in the discussion and suggest what to prioritize.

If a certain goal won’t be selected for the 5.7 release, it can always be included in the list that will be created for the 5.8 release.

Four WordPress releases are planned in 2021 with shorter release cycles: if you think that solving a specific issue or adding a new feature may require work that spans over multiple releases, let us know so that we can try to coordinate and help to get the job done.

If you have any questions, feel free to drop them in the comments or in the #accessibility channel on Slack.

#5-7, #goals

Accessibility Team Meeting Notes: December 11, 2020

These are the weekly notes 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 meeting that happens on Fridays. You can read the full transcript on our Slack channel and find the meeting’s agenda here.

Review of the team’s activities for 5.6 release

WordPress 5.6 is out since Tuesday, so the team reviewed the main accessibility achievements of the release.

  • The 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. editor now supports adding captions and subtitles to videos
  • The new Twenty Twenty-One theme is not only accessibility-ready, but also addresses more specialized standards from 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/. 2.1 at level AAA
  • A feature pluginFeature Plugin A plugin that was created with the intention of eventually being proposed for inclusion in WordPress Core. See Features as Plugins. to add an accessibility statement has been worked on during the release
  • Documentation is being rewritten to better describe accessibility patterns and antipatterns

Also, the team was able to build bridges with other teams, component maintainers and focus areas: this was greatly valued both inside the team and from the outside, and cooperation will hopefully improve even more when the new organization of the team in working groups will come into effect.

Team members were in general satisfied with the achievements and are looking into reaching even greater results in the next release.

Planning of weekly meetings during holiday season

Given that December, 25th and January, 1st fall on Friday, no meeting will happen on these days. This means that the next but one meeting will be on January, 8th.

The 5.7 development cycle hasn’t been defined yet, but the release is currently planned for March 2021, so the alpha period will happen mostly during the holidays.

A first step to set and reach targets would be to collect ideas: whoever wants to make a suggestion is invited to add a comment to the self-contained post about accessibility goals for WordPress 5.7.

During next weekly meeting, suggested goals will be discussed, but in the end it will be up to each working group to decide what to focus on for the release, based on the number of contributors and their time availability.

During holiday season, each working group will organize on its own. If needed, extra meeting and/or bug scrubs can be organized, but contributors are always encouraged to work asynchronously and ask for help at any time in the channel.

More details will be worked out during next weekly meeting.

Open floor

@Hauwa Abashiya asked what would be the best way for the training team to reach out for help from the accessibility team regarding accessibility questions raised in the creation of the learn.wordpress.org platform.

Given that most of the work is done in the GitHub repository of the learn WordPress project, it was suggested to create a specific label, so that team members can quickly identify issues related to accessibility.

#meeting-notes

Accessibility Team Meeting Agenda: December 11, 2020

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 Friday, December 11, 2020 at 16:00 UTC.

  • Review of the team’s activities for 5.6 release
  • Planning of weekly meetings during holiday season
  • 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 will be held on Friday, December 11, 2020, at 15:00 UTC.

This meeting is held in the #accessibility channel in the Making 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/. (requires registration).

#agenda

Accessibility Team Meeting Notes: December 4, 2020

These are the weekly notes 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 meeting that happens on Fridays. You can read the full transcript on our Slack channel and find the meeting’s agenda here.

Nomination of the working groups’ referents

In previous meetings, it was proposed and agreed to create working groups inside the team to better address the various aspects of WordPress accessibility. Ideally, each team should have a referent; their role would be:

  • keep track of what the group is working on
  • report about it during weekly meetings
  • ask for the team’s help to solve specific issues

Some contributors already volunteered as referent for a working group:

The teams who still need a referent are:

  • editor
  • general
  • 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

After some discussion, the team agreed that, until someone decide to volunteer, teams that don’t have a referent yet will start without one and will fill the role later.

Result of the extra bug-scrub focused on 5.7 release

On Tuesday, December 1st, an extra bug-scrub focused on preparing the 5.7 release took place: you can find the full transcript on the #accessibility Slack channel. @sabernhardt, who facilitated the bug scrub, reported quickly about the results.

  • Ticket #45925: the good-first-bug label was added and @danfarrow became the owner
  • Ticket #32510: needs some research and testing
  • Ticket #45141: needs testing from a regular keyboard user (@alexstine volunteered)
  • Ticket #42780: will need testing after an external library update
  • Ticket #49696: needs exploration

All contributors are invited to have a look at these tickets, add their thoughts and check if they can be solved in the next release

Open floor

@ryokuhi drove attention to a couple of topics that were raised the week before the meeting and that would benefit from some attention by accessibility contributors:

#meeting-notes

Accessibility Team Meeting Agenda: December 4, 2020

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 Friday, December 4, 2020 at 16:00 UTC.

  • Define the names for reference of the different working groups.
  • Review the result of the extra bug scrub. What tickets should be focused on for 5.7?
  • 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 will be held on Friday, December 4, 2020, at 15:00 UTC.

This meeting is held in the #accessibility channel in the Making 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/. (requires registration).

#agenda

Accessibility Team Meeting Notes: November 27, 2020

These are the weekly notes 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 meeting that happens on Fridays. You can read the full transcript on our Slack channel and find the meeting’s agenda here.

Badge assigning to team members and contributors

Badges are usually assigned twice a year and one of those days is today (Friday November 27, 2020.) One of these badges is Accessibility Contributor and the other is Accessibility Team. Accessibility Contributor is for those that contribute a few hours or attend the meetings while Accessibility Team is for the ones that put in a lot of time by commenting on tickets, testing/making patches, and attending meetings. @joedolson will be handling the badge assigning.

Working groups’ referents nomination

This agenda item was skipped until a future week due to the absence of people from the holidays.

Discussion about dedicating a bug-scrub to labelling good-first-bug tickets and issues

@sabernhardt has offered to step up and lead a special bug scrub. The first one will be held Tuesday December 2, 2020 at 16:00 UTC. A big thank you to @sabernhardt who has offered to lead! The main focus would be on Accessibility tagged tickets for Future Release.

Open Floor

Some discussion around sidebarSidebar A sidebar in WordPress is referred to a widget-ready area used by WordPress themes to display information that is not a part of the main content. It is not always a vertical column on the side. It can be a horizontal rectangle below or above the content area, footer, header, or any where in the theme. accessibility was brought up: review here

#meeting-notes

Accessibility Team Meeting Agenda: November 27, 2020

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 Friday, November 27, 2020 at 16:00 UTC.

  • Badge assigning to team members and contributors
  • Working groups’ referents nomination
  • Discussion about dedicating a bug-scrub to labelling good-first-bug tickets and issues.
  • 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 will be held on Friday, November 27, 2020, at 15:00 UTC.

This meeting is held in the #accessibility channel in the Making 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/. (requires registration).

#agenda

Accessibility Team Meeting Agenda: November 20, 2020

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 Friday, November 20, 2020 at 16:00 UTC.

  • Results of the 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. nomination
  • Final discussion about internal organization of the team in specialty interest groups
  • Early preparation for WordPress 5.7 release (extra bug scrubs, call for team goals, …)
  • 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 will be held on Friday, November 20, 2020, at 15:00 UTC.

This meeting is held in the #accessibility channel in the Making 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/. (requires registration).

#agenda

Accessibility Team Meeting Notes: November 13, 2020

These are the weekly notes 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 meeting that happens on Fridays. You can read the full transcript on our Slack channel and find the meeting’s agenda here.

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. nominations

The team accepted nominations for a new Team Rep and we’re happy to share that both @alexstine and @sarahricker have been nominated for the role.

Given that more than one person was nominated, we are going to open a voting round so folks can vote for the person they’d like to see as our new Team Rep.

Please follow this link to vote https://forms.gle/Bwv1PqGqhVQ9VuE28. The survey will be open until Friday, November 20, at 16:30 UTC.

Organization of team sub-groups

We discussed and decided to move forward with the idea of organizing our team around sub-groups. This will allow members of our small team to focus on specific areas of interest and expertise. The groups are:

  • Editor
  • Design
  • Media
  • Themes
  • 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.
  • Docs
  • General

Folks have already shown interest on the areas they’d like to participate in, so we’re going to give this new organization structure a try for the WP 5.7 release and we’ll adjust and adapt as necessary.

5.6 projects status

@sarahricker, our WP 5.6 Accessibility Release Coordinator, shared a status on the different projects the team is juggling during this release.

The Accessibility Statement 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 is currently being promoted in the About page. Help is needed reviewing the content of the generated statement. You can test and give feedback here.

@joedolson and @Hauwa Abashiya have been hard at work on the new pattern library to support 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/. 2.1. Please refer to 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 for more info on how you can help.

The new Twenty Twenty-One theme is moving along and they need help testing the new dark mode.

#meeting-notes

Accessibility Team Meeting Agenda: November 13, 2020

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 Friday November 13 at 16:00 UTC.

  • 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. nominations
  • Organization of team sub-groups
  • 5.6 projects status and RC1 bug scrubs
  • 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 will be held on Friday November 13 at 15:00 UTC.

This meeting is held in the #accessibility channel in the Making 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/. (requires registration).

#agenda