Stefano Minoia 6:00 pm on May 6, 2021
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Accessibility Team Meeting Agenda: May 7, 2021

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, April 30, 2021 at 16:00 UTC.

  • Updates from the team’s working groups:
    • Design
    • Documentation
    • General
    • GutenbergGutenberg The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/
    • Media
    • 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
  • 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 May 7, 2021, 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

Stefano Minoia 5:00 pm on May 6, 2021
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Accessibility Team Meeting Notes: April 30, 2021

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.

Advancement status of TracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. tickets, GutenbergGutenberg The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/ issues and team’s goals for WordPress 5.8

During the last but one meeting, the team agreed to have a general check on how the team’s work for WordPress 5.8 is progressing: the goal is to keep better track of what areas need more help and to decide if extra meetings or bug-scrubs are needed.

Trac Tickets

Here’s the situation for Trac tickets at the time of the meeting.

  • All tickets milestoned for 5.8 have an owner
  • Eight tickets are Feature Requests or Enhancements and, as such, should be committed in coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. by the Feature Freeze date (May 25, 2021); during the bug-scrub before the meeting, the team reviewed all but two of them
  • Nine tickets are marked as Bugs or Blessed Tasks, but there are two extra weeks after Feature Freeze date to commit them

While the team has done a good job at reviewing tickets, more contributors or more time would be of great help to solve these issues. Unfortunately, this is one of the biggest issues that the team is facing, but there’s little that can be done to improve this. Anyway, as the situation is under control at the moment, the team agreed not to plan any extra bug-scrubs.

Gutenberg Issues and Pull Requests

Version 10.5 of the Gutenberg 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 was released on Wednesday, April 28. The second go / no go test for Full Site Editing should have taken place on Tuesday, April 27, but the final decision about whether Full Site Editing will be included in WordPress 5.8 and at what scope was still pending at the time of the meeting. Contributors are invited to monitor the Make WordPress Core blog to check for updates.

More in general, the only accessibility issue included in the list of “WordPress 5.8 Must Haves” issues was solved two days prior to the meeting.

At the time of the meeting, there were 211 issues / Pull Requests with the “Accessibility (a11yAccessibility 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))” label and 77 issues / Pull Requests with the “Needs accessibility feedback” label. Some team members have been asked to review if some of the older issues are still relevant, hopefully they would find time in the near future.

Team Goals

@ryokuhi still have to start updating the page with instructions on how to test Gutenberg for accessibility: updated instructions will be ready at the latest by the Feature Freeze date.

Work on documentation has slowed down a bit and there are no updates, but work on it can happen also outside of the release cycle, so it’s not a big issue.

Open floor

@joedolson asked for feedback on the latest patch in the ticket to Remove infinite scrolling from the media grid.

@ryokuhi posted the proposal to add a new workflow keyword to exclude tickets until review is needed. The Core team was cross-posted and the link shared during dev-chat.

#meeting-notes

Stefano Minoia 11:00 pm on April 29, 2021
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Accessibility Team Meeting Agenda: April 30, 2021

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, April 30, 2021 at 16:00 UTC.

  • Check advancement status of TracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. tickets, GutenbergGutenberg The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/ issues and Accessibility Team’s goals for WordPress 5.8
  • 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, April 30, 2021, 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

alexstine 10:30 pm on April 29, 2021
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Accessibility Team Meeting Notes: April 23, 2021

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.

Proposal to improve usage of keywords and labels on accessibility tickets, issues and pull requests

Add a new workflow to TracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. tickets. This will allow the accessibility team to skip a ticket if there is an in progress or not yet developed UIUI UI is an acronym for User Interface - the layout of the page the user interacts with. Think ‘how are they doing that’ and less about what they are doing. from popping up in weekly bug scrubs. The proposal post was published on the Accessibility blog. Our request will be brought up in dev chat.

Updates from the working groups

Only the groups with updates to share are listed below.

GutenbergGutenberg The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/

The following updates were provided by @annezazu for Gutenberg.

  • Check out the upcoming FSE Outreach Program schedule. TLDR: call for questions coming next week + the 6th call for testing is planned to be about template editing and the navigation 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. starting May 12th.
  • Read a detailed post sharing next steps after the first go/no go date. TLDR: various testing calls and refinements need to happen before 5.8’s feature freeze on May 25th.
  • Read the IE 11 Support Phase Out Plan. TLDR: officially removing IE11 support in WordPress 5.8.
  • A PR was merged to add focus on the save button in FSE but there’s some feedback indicating that this is a disruptive flow.

Documentation and Patterns

moved the A11YAccessibility 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) Pattern Library to its own document. The 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 Update doc was getting substantial.

Media

not much movement. Requesting opinions on  removing infinite scroll.

General

Regarding general, today we still had a look at the Awaiting Review queue, next priorities are:

  • Assign an owner to all tickets in the 5.8 milestone.
  • Go through tickets milestoned for 5.8 and marked as enhancements and feature requests.

Open floor

It was suggested that the team make the accessibility team working groups more visible this way new contributors could find the list and know what each group’s responsibility is.

#meeting-notes

Stefano Minoia 10:00 pm on April 29, 2021  

Proposal: new workflow keyword to exclude tickets until review is needed

Following a discussion that started a couple of weeks ago, 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 would like feedback about the possibility of adding a new workflow keyword to TracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/.. Both the original discussion when the proposal was brought up and the related discussion during the last weekly meeting can be found 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).

The problem: asking for accessibility feedback too early

It’s very common to add the Accessibility focus to Trac tickets related to new features, in particular those which introduce new interfaces: for example, all tickets related to the About page of the last few WordPress releases have had the Accessibility focus. This allows the accessibility team to check new interfaces early in design and development and to fix problems as soon as possible: this saves a lot of time and energy, so we highly recommend doing this whenever needed.

The issue is that sometimes the Accessibility focus is added “too early”: some tickets with no mockups or where new features still have to be designed or implemented have the Accessibility focus, but they pop up during bug-scrubs week after week even if the accessibility team doesn’t really have anything to review.

This problem becomes very evident when these tickets don’t have an owner, when they are not correctly milestoned (for example, they stay in the Awaiting Review queue), and in particular when the Accessibility Team is not the main driver of design or development of the new feature.

The (possible) solution: adding a new workflow keyword

One of the proposed solution is to add a new workflow keyword to identify these tickets, so that they can be excluded from bug-scrubs until “real” feedback is needed.

A few options for the new keyword were explored.

  • needs-accessibility
  • needs-accessibility-testing
  • needs-ui
  • pending-ui

The first two options should be actively added when feedback from the accessibility team would be needed, but that would almost be identical to adding the Accessibility focus. Using one of the the last two options, instead, would probably be better: such a keyword could be added to mark tickets that can be ignored until they are moved forward.

The accessibility team didn’t express strong preference for one keyword or the other, but a keyword starting with needs- might be preferable for consistency with the other workflow keywords.

The proposed solution is especially important for the accessibility team, where interaction with other teams happens on a daily basis. In fact, the issue we are trying to solve can be more general: whenever a ticket has several focuses, but only one team is responsible of moving the ticket forward, the same situation can arise. If we’re able to find a more general keyword that fits all these similar situations, it might be useful for all teams and can have an even greater impact.

The new keyword, together with proper bug-scrubbing and moving tickets out of Awaiting Review as soon as possible, might improve the workflow not only for the accessibility team, but for the entire WordPress Community.

We would like to hear your feedback regarding this topic: you’re invited to leave a comment below and let us know what you think!

annezazu 3:21 pm on April 28, 2021
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X-post: FSE Program: Bring your questions – Round Two

X-comment from +make.wordpress.org/test: Comment on FSE Program: Bring your questions – Round Two

alexstine 7:29 pm on April 22, 2021
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Accessibility Team Meeting Agenda: April 23, 2021

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, April 23, 2021, 16:00 UTC.

  • Proposal to improve usage of keywords and labels on accessibility tickets, issues and pull requests
  • Updates from working groups
  • 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, April 23, 2021, 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

Stefano Minoia 7:00 pm on April 22, 2021
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Accessibility Team Meeting Notes: April 16, 2021

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.

Planning bug-scrubs and meetings for WordPress 5.8 release

Following updates to the 5.8 release cycle timeline and to the 5.8 pre-planning post, the next WordPress release cycle is now more defined.

@ryokuhi introduced the discussion, highlighting the main points.

  • Following the first round of testing on Full Site Editing, the plan is to merge some features in the next release.
  • In earlier releases, work on existing bugs could be done also during 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., but in the latest releases Beta was intended exclusively to fix bugs introduced during each release cycle. To allow specific time to bug squashing, a new “Feature freeze” deadline is introduced two weeks before Beta 1: after Feature freeze, only bug fixing is allowed.
  • At the time of the meeting, without taking in consideration GutenbergGutenberg The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/ and Full Site Editing, there were 17 tickets in the 5.8 milestone: 1 ticket is marked as early , 1 ticket is a feature request , 7 tickets are enhancements  and 3 don’t have an owner (but the team has to address only 2 of them).
  • As the difference between enhancements and bugs is now significant again, the team needs to decide how to prioritize work, given that until now bug-scrubs focused mainly on tickets in the Awaiting Review queue and that new features or enhancements should be ready by May 25.

A discussion followed about how to prioritize work so that all tickets marked for 5.8 will make it in the release.

The main decision was to have to two checkpoints on April 30 (right after the second Go / No Go test on Full Site Editing) and on May 21, to better keep track of what areas need more help and to decide if extra meetings or bug-scrubs are needed.

Also, in the next weeks bug-scrubs will gradually move from focusing on Awaiting Review, to Feature Requests and Enhancements, and then to Bugs and Tasks.

Updates from working groups

Only groups which had updates shared them.

Gutenberg

@annezazu shared a few updates about Full Site Editing and Gutenberg in general.

  • The call for testing on the Query Block was shipped with feedback due by May 5: as 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. will almost certainly be included in 5.8, contributors are invited to test for accessibility concerns as soon as possible.
  • The post about the first Go / No Go test helps to understand the major areas of focus for Full Site Editing in 5.8, so it can be an interesting reading. According to the post, the main areas in need of tests are template editing and major blocks like the Navigation Block and the Query Block.
  • A Pull Request to add block titles to the block switcher label will be included in version 10.5 of the 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.
  • The Pull Request about focusing the save button when the save panel opens might need some extra feedback.

Documentation

@Jill Mugge reported that the working group is adding more accessible patterns and antipatterns. During the meeting, she suggested that creating a template for documentation could be helpful to stay consistent and improve accessibility, so she volunteered to do it.

Media

@joedolson reported that he did some work and that he should make more progress by next week.

Open floor

A clarification was given about why threads should be avoided on 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/..

#meeting-notes

alexstine 9:53 pm on April 15, 2021
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Accessibility Team Meeting Agenda: April 16, 2021

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, April 16, 2021, 16:00 UTC.

  • Planning additional bug scrubs and meetings for WordPress 5.8 release.
  • Updates from working groups
  • 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, April 16, 2021, 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

Stefano Minoia 8:30 pm on April 15, 2021
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Accessibility Team Meeting Notes: April 9, 2021

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.

Quarterly community updates

Every three months, all Make WordPress teams are asked to update the community at large about what they are doing, so that everyone is aware of what’s going on. All updates are collected in a post published in a specific section of the WordPress website.

Previously, discussion about what to write in the post was left to the team reps, but @alexstine and @ryokuhi agreed that bringing it in the wild would be good for the team.

During the meeting, the team discussed about the challenges and big wins for the team in the preceding three months. @ryokuhi offered to integrate the points brought up during the meeting with the team goals for the next release and to write the report. Updates for the first quarter are now available on the Make website.

Updates from working groups

GutenbergGutenberg The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/

@annezazu and @poena shared a few updates regarding Gutenberg and Full Site Editing

Full Site Editing updates

Gutenberg highlights

Documentation

@Jill Mugge has been working on accessible patterns and antipatterns.

Media

@joedolson reported that everybody on the media team has been very busy in the last month, and nobody has done work on any open tickets yet.

Design

@sarahricker had been away for a few weeks and no one else was able to report.

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.

@joedolson reported that there were no updates regarding meta.

Themes

@poena left a note after the meeting.

  • There was no progress regarding the workshop for reviewing accessibility-ready themes
  • There was no progress regarding adding more end user information about what accessibility-ready means
  • The list of approved themes waiting for accessibility-ready review is empty, but the Michelle live theme is waiting for it

General

Bug-scrubs are still focused on clearing the Awaiting Review queue as much as possible. As soon as the 5.8 release date is confirmed, focus will move to tickets in the 5.8 milestone (currently, there are 15 of them).

Open floor

@paaljoachim asked for general and accessibility feedback about two Learn WordPress tutorials he wrote. This lead to opening an issue to fix the contrast problem in the Code Block CSS in the Learn WordPress repository.

#meeting-notes