Category: Accessibility

There are 158 posts filed in Accessibility (this is page 19 of 27).

You cannot release a product with significant issues and call it a quality product. You cannot ignore a11y because it gets in your way and call yourself an advocate. @photomatt can continue to play this wrong all he likes, but that still doesn’t make it jazz.
Quoted

Following is a transcription of what are apparently official comments from Yoast regarding the slated WordPress 5.0 release on Thursday. I’m providing this transcription for those who are using Twitter clients which do not support alternative text, (essentially the blindness-specific Twitter client), as well as for those on Facebook, Micro.blog and Mastodon. The quote reads:

We vehemently disagree with the decision to release WordPress 5.0 on December 6th, and think it’s irresponsible and disrespectful towards the community. However, we’re now going to try and support the community as well as possible and we hope to show everyone that Gutenberg is indeed a huge step forward.

Yoast is one of the largest plugin developers in the WordPress space, and they’ve made no bones about their support for accessibility. This tweet, for example, carries alternative text, and Yoast has made it a point to ensure that the user interfaces for their Search Engine Optimization plugin are as accessible as possible given the current WordPress interface. Joost’s comment is probably as professional as it’s going to get on this score, and know, I’m not counting the “everything-is-awesome” type comments that will inevitably be shared by Matt from Gutenberg’s cheering section in the score. There’s been a lot of chaos around Gutenberg and accessibility, and it’s heartening to know that so many in the WordPress space, including some rather large plugin and theme shops, are fighting alongside traditional accessibility advocates. All of you have my sincerest thanks.

Read Playboy.com Sued by Man Alleging Website Not Accessible to the Blind

Playboy.com sued by man claiming website is not accessible to visually impaired.

I’m trying to decide if TMZ counts as accessibility hitting the mainstream or not. Also, someone should let them know that, (while Playboy Magazine has been available as part of the National Library Service for the Blind and Visually Handicapped for decades), in both braille and audio formats, blind people do not read Playboy for the articles. Some blind people are avid consumers of adult entertainment just as some sighted people are. Also, dear Playboy, if Pornhub can figure out how to make their entire site accessible while preserving its nature and content, you can too.
Read First Accessibility Agreement in U.S. to Use WCAG 2.1: Reached With Structured Negotiation

On November 2, 2018 Alameda County California, three blind residents, and the National Federation of the Blind announced a settlement designed to protect the rights of blind voters to participate fully in the county’s voting program.

It is the first agreement in the United States to include WCAG 

I’m glad to see that WCAG 2.1 is being adopted so quickly. It was released on June 5, 2018, WCAG 2.0 took a while to be adopted as the standard. 2.1 does a lot to address the needs of not only people with disabilities, but also people who are older, (sorry screen reader users, it’s not just about us and it never has been), and I’m pleased to see that we didn’t have to wait two years to see it adopted. I’m also glad the National Federation of the Blind resorted to structured negotiation and not a lawsuit, and would like to see more campaigning in the organization’s ranks for this approach.
I’m really, really glad to see that Deque Systems is participating in/holding a hackathon at this year’s WordCamp US contributor day along with the Accessibility Team and those on the core team who are familiar with WordPress’s testing environment, in order to integrate aXe-Core into our core. Can we call this inception yet? I use Tenon, (a competing tool), and of course I’m a Tenon fan, but I also really like aXe-core. I just find it harder to use as a screen reader user trying to fight with Firefox’s developer tools, and Chrome’s developer tools are less accessible than Firefox’s. I’m still working out some last minute details to hopefully make it to WCUS this year so I can participate. I don’t know much about WordPress’s tests but would love to help in person any way I can. Plus, it’s WordCamp. This is an incredibly positive step forward for both WordPress as well as Gutenberg, and nothing makes me happier than to see it. This is the starting point on the road to making Gutenberg one of the most awesome things on the planet in my opinion: a block editor and eventually a complete site editor with drag-and-drop capabilities that everyone can use.