Joe A Simpson Jr 9:08 pm on December 10, 2021
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Accessibility Team Meeting Notes: December 3, 2021

These are the weekly notes for the Make WordPress 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 occurred Friday, 17:00 UTC. You can read the entire transcript on our Slack channel and view the Meeting Agenda here. The meeting begins after the conclusion of the bug scrub, a welcome to new attendees, and rules for a family-friendly meeting.

Update from Working Groups

As usual, we had a round of updates from the various working groups inside our Accessibility team.

Design Team

Design Team news was shared by @shaunandrews, listing some tickets and issues on TracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. and GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can 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/ which might benefit from review from the team:

  • Ticket 54270 – About Page for 5.9 Release;
  • Ticket 54489 – Update the Dashboard Welcome Banner for 5.9;
  • Issue 37067 – Panel Color Gradient settings to use dropdowns; and
  • Issue 37075 – Load the template list in the site editor without page reloads.

@joedolson suggested that the priority should probably be the About Page for 5.9. Also, volunteers were requested to review these issues so that they’ll be handled. Joe volunteered for the Welcome screen update and possibly the About Page. @alexstine subscribed to the template selection issue to track its progress.

Documentation Team

@azhiyadev provided the update for the Documentation Team. During the week before the meeting, she had a further look at the handbook, checking for 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/. versions referred to and updating broken links. She asked a couple questions.

  • Should the handbook be converted to using 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?
  • In terms of 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 recommendations, are there any concerns regarding plugins that haven’t been tested with the latest version of WordPress? An example of one that is recommended is WP Libre Forms (referred in the handbook and tested up to WordPress 4.8.17).

Regarding the use of the block editor for the handbook, @ryokuhi expressed an opinion that we should stick with the classic editor for the handbook, as 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/ is still difficult to use for people with disabilities (in case editing is needed by those using assistive technologies). @shaunandrews added that having more people use the block editor and report any accessibility issues is the best way to improve the experience.

Regarding recommended plugins, those that haven’t been tested at least with version 5.7 should be removed. Joe is really uncomfortable recommending anything that shows evidence of being abandoned in the repository. This section needs to be updated desperately.

Also, @azhiyadev asked if there were any recommendations for web forms plugins to be listed in the handbook. Contact Form 7 or Gravity Forms were suggested by @joedolson, but additional clarification was needed (regarding whether Gravity Forms’ WCAG 2.0 form field plugin is still needed). Finally, we should indicate that we have not conducted a full accessibility audit on these recommendations. 

General Team

At the moment there aren’t any accessibility tickets milestones for 5.9. For the news, 28 tickets milestoned for 5.9 will be included in the next release.

Media Team

This team has finished off quite a bit and is now planning for 6.0. Planning includes preparation for updating the search and filtering options in the Media Library.

Themes Team

@sabernhardt reported that Twenty Twenty-Two has an h1 related issue (Issue 233). @joedolson will comment on the issue and @ryokuhi stated we’ll probably need to discuss this issue again in the future to see if a review of the Accessibility-Ready guidelines is required.

Open Floor

There will only be a bug scrub on December 10th and our next team meeting will resume December 17th, our last gathering of 2021.

A reminder that WordPress Accessibility Day returns in 2022 and the first organizational meeting for this event kicks off December 16th. DM @joedolson for more details and an invitation.

#meeting-notes

alexstine 10:19 pm on December 1, 2021
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Accessibility Team Meeting Agenda: December 3, 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, December 3, 2021, 17:00 UTC.

  • Updates from 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 Friday, December 3, 2021, 16:00 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 9:00 pm on November 19, 2021
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Accessibility Team Meeting Notes: November 19, 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.

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

Last week, it was decided that the nominations for team rep would stay open until this meeting due to lack of nominations. During the last week, @joedolson nominated @joesimpsonjr, who accepted the nomination. @alexstine and @ryokuhi offered to keep helping out as team reps for the next six months, when the nominations open again. For the time being, the Accessibility team will have three team reps to help share the role.

Possibility of switching to bi-weekly meetings

The team agreed to switch to bi-weekly meetings instead of weekly ones, which will be especially useful near critical release dates. On the weeks when a meeting is not held, there will be an asynchronous sharing, especially from working groups referents. The bug-scrubs will continue to happen weekly and the meeting times and days will stay the same.

Upcoming changes to meetings

Open floor

@joedolson and @alh0319 are starting to plan the WordPress Accessibility Day 2022. A few things will be done differently from the first event.

  • The event will be independently organized, without involvement of the WordPress Community Team.
  • Planning and coordinating will happen in the WordPress Accessibility Day 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/.. Anyone who wants to be involved in the planning can send a Direct Message to @joedolson on the Make WordPress Slack.

#meeting-notes

alexstine 4:28 pm on November 17, 2021
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Accessibility Team Meeting Agenda: November 19, 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, November 19, 2021, 17:00 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 are still open as there were no nominations last meeting. See the linked post for more information. Call for Team Rep Nominations
  • Possibility of switching to biweekly meetings
  • Skipping following meeting because of Thanksgiving
  • 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 19, 2021, 16:00 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 10:00 pm on November 12, 2021
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Accessibility Team Meeting Notes: November 12, 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.

Given that WordPress 5.9 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. 1 will be released on Tuesday, November 16, 2021, @ryokuhi suggested to skip the point about the updates from the working groups and to quickly go through the other points, in order to allow more time to go through the tickets milestoned for 5.9 which weren’t discussed during the bug-scrub that had started before the meeting.

Team Reps nominations

As no one nominated either themselves or someone else for the role, the team agreed to postpone the deadline for nominations by one week: the new deadline is November 19, 2021. You can find more information in the Call for Team Reps nominations post.

@joedolson suggested the possibility of moving to bi-weekly meetings, to reduce the burden on Team Reps. This proposal requires extra discussion and will be considered during one of the next weekly meetings, when the team will be less focused on the next release.

Open floor

No topic was raised during open floor.

#meeting-notes

alexstine 6:45 pm on November 10, 2021
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Accessibility Team Meeting Agenda: November 12, 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, November 12, 2021, 17:00 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 are still open until 30min after the start of the meeting. See the linked post for more information. Call for Team Rep Nominations
  • Updates from 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 Friday, November 12, 2021, 16:00 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 5:00 pm on November 10, 2021
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Accessibility Team Meeting Notes: November 5, 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.

Updates from working groups

Only groups that provided updates are shown below.

General

Feature Freeze for WordPress 5.9 happens on Tuesday, November 9, 2021: enhancements and feature requests have to be committed before this deadline, but the team has been working a lot on them and there are only a few of them that might be punted.

There are 18 tickets marked as bugs and tasks currently milestoned for 5.9: 3 of them were reviewed during the bug-scrub before the meeting, the rest of them will be reviewed either asynchronously or during next bug-scurb, hopefully in time for 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. 1, which will happen on Tuesday, November 16, 2021.

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 GitHub issue about adding hover color options to the Button block probably won’t be included in WordPress 5.9.

Media

The media team is working on various minor fixes and enhancements.

Themes

The Twenty Twenty-Two issue about hover, active and focus styles for buttons is worth reviewing, given that these styles will not be handled natively in Gutenberg, at least not in WordPress 5.9.

Open floor

Reminder: beginning with the next meeting, the weekly meeting will start at 17:00 UTC, with the bug scrub starting at 16:00 UTC.

Don’t forget to nominate yourself or someone else as Accessibility 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. by adding a comment to the Call for Team Reps post.

Given the large amount of spamming pingbacks that appeared below the Call for Team Reps post, the team is considering the possibility to disable pingbacks on the Make WordPress Accessible website.

#meeting-notes

alexstine 5:51 pm on November 3, 2021
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Accessibility Team Meeting Agenda: November 5, 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, November 5, 2021, 16:00 UTC.

  • Updates from 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 Friday, November 5, 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

alexstine 4:13 am on October 30, 2021
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Accessibility Team Meeting Notes: October 22, 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.

Results from bug-scrub and meeting time change poll

The results are officially in. The new bug-scrub time will be 16:00 UTC and the meeting time will be 17:00 UTC. The first bug-scrub and meeting to be affected by this change will be Friday, November 12, 2021 16:00 UTC.

Nominations for new team reps

It is that time of year again when the Accessibility team is looking for new team reps. @alexstine is coming up on a year and @ryokuhi on sixteen months. Check out Team Rep Nominations post for some background.

This is the process that was followed before and that will be implemented again for the process.

  1. A call for Team Reps post was published: add a comment to this post to nominate yourself or someone you think is fit for the role.
  2. We’ll leave the post open for comments for a couple of weeks. During the next but one meeting, we’ll review nominations and, in case there are more than two candidates, we’ll organize a poll to select the next Team Reps.
  3. We’ll leave the poll open for one extra week, so that the new Team Reps will be chosen by November 19.

If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out @alexstine or @ryokuhi 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/. either via DM or in the accessibility channel.

Accessibility improvements to the Media Library regarding infinite scroll

In response to a comment on infinite scroll by @priethor, @joedolson left some notes during the chat, which are reported below.

Navigating items with arrow keys, being dependent on relative visual location, are difficult for screen reader users to use. Arrow key navigation of a grid is spatial, and spatial relationships change based on viewport, so they lose pattern repeatability for screen reader users between devices. It’s easy to get lost, because there’s no real point of reference or order.
What I’d like to see in a new media library is to give list & grid views equal importance. Right now, the grid view is extremely dominant: there’s no list view available anywhere outside of the library, so using media is heavily dependent on navigating the grid.
The media library, as it stands, doesn’t offer a lot of flexibility in navigation, so all users are forced into the same interaction set. Media absolutely benefits from a visual navigation, since it is a predominantly visual medium; but since the people using media are not necessarily able to benefit from visual navigation, there needs to be a mode of navigation that is better suited to those needs.
For example, if what you’re looking for is a Word document in the current media grid, the visual layout is really not helpful at all; visual scanning provides minimal benefit.
Finding a way to make a fundamentally spatial/visual navigation usable for all is a limiting approach; it’s always going to be a fairly crappy experience for people who don’t benefit from spatial/visual information. While it’s beneficial to have keyboard navigation within a spatial grid, the accessibility problem is communicating meaningful information about current position within that grid to non-visual users. It’s better overall to have multiple navigation methods, so that users can take advantage of the mechanisms most suitable to the type of media they’re handling and their preferred method of locating media.
The crucial thing for accessibility is that there is an accessible way to accomplish every task. It is not necessary for every method of accomplishing that task to be equally accessible to all users.
With the addition of an effective alternative view, the ability to flex other options in the grid view increases significantly.
In summary:
The fundamental point is that trying to find a perfect solution to the grid navigation is solving the wrong problem.

As @priethor wasn’t able to attend the meeting, the topic will be considered again when he’ll be able to join for one of the next meetings or asynchronously.

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/: adding an announcement on formatting change for screen readers

@alexstine asked for feedback and some extra testing from screen reader users on the related pull request.

Open floor

Next week there won’t be an extra bug-scrub in view of the 5.9 release; maybe an extra bug-scrub will be held during the following week, but it’ll be decided during the next weekly meeting.

Given the large participation during the extra bug-scrub held last Wednesday, it was proposed to change the bug-scrub time once a month, but this will be reconsidered after the meeting time change.

#meeting-notes

Stefano Minoia 4:00 am on October 30, 2021
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Call for Team Rep Nominations

As announced during the last weekly meeting, all WordPress Teams have been requested to start the process to select the new Team Reps. Since I’ve been 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. for about 16 months now and @alexstine has been in the role for almost a year, this seems like the perfect time for us to step down, so that someone else can take up the role.

To learn more about the role, you can check the article about what it means to be a Team Rep. In summary,

Team Rep is a leadership role that is mostly administrative in nature; it is not a Lead role.
Letting go of the Team Rep title is not a loss of status, just a handing off of responsibilities.
Someone who is a leader in a team can lead whether they are doing the team rep job or not.

Traditionally, 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 has had two Team Reps, which is really useful because it allows them to share responsibilities, divide tasks and cover each other when needed.

If you would like to be considered for the role or know someone who would be a great fit, you have the opportunity to nominate yourself or others by adding a comment to this post. Remember that, if someone nominates you, but you don’t feel like accepting, you should feel more than free to say no: your nomination be considered only if you explicitly agree.

We’ll be reviewing nominations during the weekly meeting happening on Friday, November 12, 2021 at 17:00 UTC. Depending on the number of submissions, the eventual voting round will take place during the following week, with Team Reps being elected during the meeting happening on Friday, November 19, 2021 at 17:00 UTC.

If you have any questions about the Team Rep role or the nomination process, please feel free to reach out to @alexstine or me (@ryokuhi) in the comments or 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/., either with a Direct Message or in the accessibility channel. Both of us have already agreed to support the new Team Reps during the transition period.

Thanks to @alexstine, who peer reviewed this post before the publication.

November 12, 2021 update

As of today, no one volunteered or nominated someone else as a possible Team Rep. Because of that, during the weekly meeting, the team agreed to extend the deadline for nomitations by one extra week.

We’ll be reviewing again nominations during the weekly meeting happening on Friday, November 19, 2021 at 17:00 UTC.

#team-reps