#WCUS I’m glad that @RianKinney asked that question regarding accessibility and other policies.
It would be so cool if we could treat #a11y as an “everything-is-awesome” moment and not as a must-do.
Problem with that approach was aptly illustrated by Gutenberg being released in an inaccessible state.
I’d like to say I’m surprised we’re apparently still doing this despite $31,000 worth of audit, but I’m not.
Yes, it would be totally awesome if we didn’t have to say “you must” with regard to accessibility, but unfortunately the makers of the web have consistently demonstrated that that is literally the only way anything gets done.
For the first few years of my career as an accessibility practitioner, I worked on a series of projects whose final reports heavily focused on only the positive, including asking testers with disabilities to talk about what they liked, even on seriously inaccessible sites.
That approach wasn’t just partially ineffective, it was one hundred percent ineffective.
Absolutely none of the sites reported on were fixed, or even improved.
Those sites are still broken.
That’s what happens when you spend your time objecting to accessibility must-dos because they’re must-dos instead of realizing that, yes Matt, there really are things that developers and designers have consistently demonstrated they will not do unless you basically force them to do those things.
All of this also goes for privacy and codes of conduct.
Why do we have to keep saying this?
#WCUS #sOTW @photomatt didn’t mention this, but as of WordPress 5.2 the widgets screen got a metric ton of #a11y improvements, which means I get to update the WordPress with a Screen Reader widgets tutorial and you get to use the same widgets screen as everyone else, including when plugin developers explicitly disable widgeet accessibility mode.
Huge hugs and shoutout to everyone who worked on that.
In short, WordPress.com would need to support at least two of the Indieweb building blocks: Webmention and full Microformats 2. See all the building blocks at the first link.
In order for WordPress.com to be a turnkey solution, it’ll need to support these things out of the box, and make it as simple as checking some boxes, or better yet, turn them all on for everybody by stealth.
part of this involves themes, and for the time being users either have to install a plugin like MF2 from the WordPress repository which will try to programmatically add Microformats 2 to a theme, or choose a theme that has full Microformats 2 support already baked in, or manually add them to a theme themselves.
I’m not saying WordPress.com couldn’t do this, (I’d love it if they did, and if they became a turnkey solution for people who want to join the Indieweb), but I don’t see that happening any time soon.
#WCUS Question: Do you find it easier to read websites/pages that are multicolumn or single-column?
It doesn’t matter to me as a screen reader user, because everything is always a single column, but I’m thinking that if a page is one column, never-ending scrolling can become an issue.
On the other hand, there could be a reason that multiple columns could also be an issue for people who use their vision to read.
Thoughts?
Everybody’s new #WCUS selfies and headshots were making me jealous and agrevating the fomo, so I decided to bite the bullet and put some work into customerservant.com
I’m just focusing on a few simple things today because, well, I need some easy wins.
Right now it’s just a picture and some text on the website, cleaning up things that aren’t being used, and then later on after the State of the Word, some things I need to have my host handle.
I’ll do some more complicated work tomorrow during the contributor day.
But, starting is much better than planning and not doing, so I’m taking the easy wins for now.
John Carson