Accessibility Team Meeting Notes: February 16, 2024

These are the bi-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 here or see the full meeting schedule.

Updates from the working groups

NOTE: Only groups that provided updates are shown below.

Team Updates

Documentaton Working Group:

• @joedolson asked the team to comment on some proposed changes to the plugin directory design.

General Working Group:

• @joedolson shared that 6.5 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. is out and in testing, so please take a look! There are still some important bug fixes in hoping to get in.

Gutenberg Working Group:

@annezazu shared this update from the 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/ Working Group:

Outside of the chaos and joy of 6.5, some quick items to note for you all:

• Check out this proposal for Core blocks in the directory. This is an important one to read through.
• Want to flag this longstanding issue Citation field is only indicated by placeholder text and this PR that might just fix it Quote block: button for cite add/remove for review.
• Escape as Select/Edit mode Toggle — recently merged PR for GB 17.7 (last to get in for 6.5).
• Second layout prototype — draft PR looking to improve layout controls.

Also want to flag up whether anyone is game to write a recap of accessibility improvements for 6.5.

Open Floor for Discussion:

• Joe asked for more feedback on the Accessibility Vision Document;
• @joesimpsonjr asks due to attending WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. Asia (in transit March 1), should we cancel our next regularly scheduled meeting?
• Joe Jr also shared a message from @bethannon1: I’m reaching out to see if you think there might be interest in exploring the idea of having an accessibility-specific “happiness table” at WCUS – potentially alongside the more generic happiness table. Even if it was only for one morning or one afternoon, it might be a great way to raise awareness about accessibility. One morning or afternoon could be staffed by 4 to 6 people. One whole day might require 10 to 12 people. With my existing commitments around the event I don’t think I would be able to help staff it – but we could plan for Meg Miller from our team to help. Maybe there would be a handful of other folks from the accessibility team that might be interested?

NOTE: If you’d like to have a topic added to the agenda for our next meeting, please mention it in the comments on an upcoming agenda.