WPTavern disagrees with Studio 24’s decision to drop WordPress over Gutenberg. I was going to write a long comment on that post, but then I figured I’d just address it on my site.

The Tavern’s disagreement hinges on the W3C prioritizing accessibility over its commitment to open source. And I’m wondering why that’s a bad thing.

Open source as a rule, (and FLOSS in particular, from Stallman on down), continues to consider accessibility one of those things that should be left up to the choice of the developer instead of something that should be implemented so that everyone can enjoy the freedoms granted by the GPL and other licenses. And anyone who has spent any time advocating for accessibility within the free spoftware space knows this. There’s a reason advocates are giving talks about the rights aspect of this instead of technical talks.

That talk’s from 2017, and I can’t think of another talk given by an accessibility advocate in that space since then. I can’t speak for anyone else but I get the impression we’ve finally just given up on trying to convince the Free Software movement that accessibility should be a requirement instead of a nice-to-have at best.

So it’s kind of nice to see the W3C flip tables over this.

Prioritizing accessibility over open source/free software isn’t the wrong thing to do, it’s the right thing to do, especially given the state of accessibility in the FLOSS space.

With regard to Gutenberg specifically, out of the eight projects I’m working on right now, two clients can use it without wanting to throw something, and only one of them really enjoys it. That client doesn’t have a disability and doesn’t use assistive technology. I still find Gutenberg to be an efficiency nightmare, and I’ve been using it for seven months now. And while I don’t think there’s a person alive who would say that the accessibility of the thing hasn’t improved, the part of that talk by Joe Dolsen left out is that the issues that have been closed and the accessibility successes are a start.

There’s also this, from his post on this subject:

When I read that statement, I feel like it implies that I gave a positive report on the accessibility state of Gutenberg in a way that isn’t really accurate.
Both those statements are absolutely true: two-thirds of the issues reported in the initial accessibility audit of Gutenberg have been solved, and the
overall accessibility is, indeed, vastly improved over the release, as would be expected given the first piece of information.
But it ignores the fact that those accessibility issues are not the only concerns raised on the project. They only encompass issues that existed in the
spring of 2019. Since then, many features have been added and changed, and those features both resolve issues and have created new ones. The accessibility
team is constantly playing catch up to try and provide enough support to improve Gutenberg. And even now, while it is more or less accessible, there are
critical features that are not yet implemented. There are entirely new interface patterns introduced on a regular basis that break prior accessibility
expectations.
And the statement that Gutenberg is vastly more accessible than at release is not particularly significant. At release, it was woefully inadequate; now
it’s bearable and largely usable, but in no way enjoyable. And in certain respects, it is lacking extremely basic features, such as support for adding
video captions within Gutenberg.

Note also Joe’s comments regarding WordPress and internationalization. They’re important, and I’m seconding them completely.

Improvement is excellent, but it’s not done. And speaking as someone who has to use Gutenberg on a pretty regular basis, it’s not ready to be deployed if you’re concerned about whether or not people with disabilities can add content to your system.

I hope that the W3C’s decision will convince WordPress’s leadership to prioritize accessibility at a higher level. But hope is not a strategy, and I don’t think organizations or individuals should be expected to stick with something that clearly isn’t meeting their needs or is even causing problems for the sake of their devotion to FLOSS.

I think Gutenberg is a great idea, despite the all-too-frequent flare-ups that still happen over accessibility issues. But I definitely don’t enjoy using it, and I don’t know any people with disabilities who enjoy using it either. And WCAG 2.0 is the minimum. You could completely conform to WCAG 2.0, and it doesn’t mean you’ve created something people with disabilities can use as effortlessly as everyone else.

Until Gutenberg gets to a point where it’s as easy to use as the classic editor, (if it ever does), organizations who either employ or want to employ people with disabilities are going to continue to drop WordPress over it. And telling them to fork WordPress or to maintain the classic editor plugin after WordPress stops doing that isn’t a solution to the problem. It’s about the most obtuse thing that could be said.

OK, so we’re doing this. But for this site, it’s going to take some planning. First, there are several custom post types this site relies on, and it also heavily relies on the suite of plugins which enable WordPress sites to participate in the Indieweb movement. I’m definitely not giving that up, so this means that there are going to have to be some contributions to those plugins to make them suitable for Gutenberg use.

I’ve volunteered to be the lab rat for this, since I depend on it and I don’t want to give it up and go back to not-indieweb. I’ve decided to journal the entire process, starting from Day 0 until we get everything finished.

after doing some initial planning, (determining what custom post types are in play, plus post kinds), a separate development environment has been set up, which has Gutenberg installed. John’s using Twentytwenty on a smaller site he’s working on, so I think the development environment will have a Genesis theme for its base install. I’m also chatting back and forth in Indieweb Slack.

I figure if I’m doing this, may as well jump off the deep end. We have a target date of just after Labor Day for launch, and I’m going to do my best to stick to that. And I’m documenting the entire process, challenges and all. It should be interesting.

I’ve asked for a link to the relevant conversation, and so far haven’t received a response, so in the meantime, (assuming that this individual has the best of intentions, giving benefit of the doubt and all that), I’d like to get an honest answer to the question which forms the title of this post, because as both an accessibility practitioner and as a person with a visible disability who quite literally is reliant on whether or not accessibility is viewed as more than just a nice-to-have by developers, I’m tired.

I bookmarked Heydon’s post because quite frankly it telescopes excuses for inaccessibility I hear on a regular basis from developers, and yes, I’m glad someone can manage to create some humor borne out of what is very draining: Advocating for accessibility.

Advocating for accessibility and in some cases fixing accessibility issues in code is draining because there appears to be no end in sight, and experience tells me that even if I wade into a code base, make accessibility fixes, leave detailed comments explaining the fix, more often than not for free, and the pull request is accepted, that fix will be reverted or broken in some other way and it’s only a matter of time as to when this will happen. And that’s the ideal situation. I can wade into a code base, propose a fix, and for the most part be guaranteed a protracted argument, sometimes over a single line of code, about why that accessibility fix won’t go in, and we swear we care about accessibility and we’re never going to admit anything but the purest of intentions and don’t you dare call us ableist because that will hurt our feelings.

And I’m far from the only accessibility practitioner who gets to experience things going down like this.

If you’re a person with disabilities, even one who doesn’t professionally work in the accessibility space, you are expected to advocate and educate for your entire life, most of the time for free, except when you’re inspiring the living daylights out of abled people through the videos and photos they take, often without your consent, which they then post on social media and through which they enjoy viral internet fame.

Oh and you’re also expected to be polite, ask nicely for the accessibility crumbs you manage to catch falling from the table, and God help you if you file a lawsuit because lawsuits are bad and well to be honest they’re evidence of your ingratitude.

This is a battle we have been waging on the web for the last twenty years. Accentuating the positive hasn’t worked. Providing business case after business case hasn’t worked. Pointing out the benefits to everyone who isn’t a person with disabilities hasn’t worked. Fixing your code for free hasn’t worked. Thousands and thousands of hours of free advice and training and examples hasn’t worked.

So yeah fellow developers, I’d really like to know at what point accessibility folk are permitted to lose our patience with all this without you stomping your feet and crying fowl, and I’d really like to know what exactly will convince you to do the needful, learn the basics, and start creating things that everyone can use without having to badger you into it so we can quit going over the basics time and time and time again and focus on fixing actual issues.

What exactly is the magic solution to ending this fight and not spending the rest of my life advocating for my civil rights and training you and inspiring you because if there is some magic solution I will gladly employ it so I can stop giving a damn about accessibility and just live my life like a normal person.

Signed:

A web developer who is absolutely exhausted by constantly fighting with the rest of you.

Wendy Delfosse asks on Twitter:

Best places to start for learning to use WordPress with visual impairment? A user wants to know how to pick a great theme since he won’t be able to verify the design himself. Any tips greatly appreciated.

(Source).

More specifically, the user Wendy is asking on behalf of is looking for help with making sure their site looks good with background images, fonts, ETC. I responded in multiple replies with several tips based on my experience. Here are those tips.

Picking a great theme is very much dependent on what you consider great, including visually. Also, in the case of visually impaired, blind specifically, whether you have visual elements like images, for example, to help make a theme look like the demmo, except with your content/site.

So, to start with, does this user have a concept of what they’re looking for visually in a site? If not, I’d say start with an accessibility ready theme and then, once you’ve figured out branding/colors/images ETC., go from there.

Also keep in mind that no out-of-box theme will have everything you want. So make a list of things that are essential in a theme, then nice-to-haves, and then, once ready to grow, decide on budget for hiring out the visual work of site building/design.

Find a sighted person you can trust. Looks good is also unfortunately one of those things that to a large extent is in the eye of the beholder. Knowing what you want from a site in terms of who the audience is for the site is also helpful in this, because it helps narrow down the “looks good” part.

If it’s something like a personal site though, I’d go with picking an accessibility ready theme, and then, after that, don’t worry so much about how it looks to others except for basic contrast issues, which accessibility ready themes will cover adequately. In short, if it’s a personal site, just be yourself.

One last thing. When picking a sighted person to trust with this stuff, stick with one person. Be careful about second opinions as sighted people who are not designers/familiar with design principles/accessibility will give you widely varrying and often conflicting results. It’s kind of the same thing as asking a random sighted person how your clothing looks.

Off the top of my head, I think this covers the basics from this perspective. But, if there’s something I haven’t thought of, feel free to leave it in the comments, and I’ll update this post accordingly.

WHEREAS, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) is a comprehensive civil rights law that prohibits discrimination based on disability; and
WHEREAS, to assist Americans with disabilities in asserting our rights under the ADA, Congress included a private right of action, which has assisted Americans with disabilities to secure landmark victories that have opened doors in employment, education, commerce, and other arenas; and
WHEREAS, under Department of Justice interpretation and court rulings, ADA Title III applies not only to physical places of public accommodation but also to their websites; and
WHEREAS, many websites are inaccessible to blind people who use screen readers to access digital content and to other people with disabilities; and
WHEREAS, a small group of plaintiffs and attorneys are exploiting the situation by filing dozens, occasionally hundreds, of lawsuits all at once or in rapid succession; and
WHEREAS, rather than acknowledging that website inaccessibility is a real and growing problem, some business groups and media outlets have focused on this behavior as evidence that the ADA is merely a tool for greedy lawyers to extort quick cash settlements from businesses; and
WHEREAS, this largely misplaced blame for ADA lawsuits has led to the introduction, and in some cases enactment, of state legislation that places onerous burdens on people and organizations who wish to bring legitimate complaints under the ADA, as well as attempts to enact federal legislation that would have the same effect; and
WHEREAS, even if litigants act in good faith and with noble intentions, blanketing a geographic area or business type with lawsuits often does not meaningfully advance the cause of accessibility because the litigants may lack the resources or the commitment to investigate each lawsuit thoroughly, and many lawsuits brought in this way are settled quickly and confidentially, thereby failing to hold public accommodations accountable for true progress toward making their websites accessible: Now, therefore
BE IT RESOLVED by the National Federation of the Blind in Convention assembled this eleventh day of July, 2019, in the City of Las Vegas, Nevada, that this organization urge members of the legal community to engage in responsible, ethical, and transparent behavior when pursuing ADA litigation, including contacting targeted entities to try to resolve accessibility issues without litigation where possible and appropriate and to draw up public settlement agreements that outline the specific steps to be taken by an entity to achieve accessibility and the anticipated timeline for those steps to be completed; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that this organization reaffirm its opposition to any legislation, state or federal, that seeks to shift the burden of compliance from the entities to people with disabilities affected by noncompliance; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that this organization continue to work collaboratively with the policymaking, legal, business, and web development communities to advance accessibility, while not hesitating to commence litigation if needed.

The only thing I could think to add to this resolution would be a clause urging people with disabilities to act ethically and responsibly regarding aDA litigation. There’s quite a cottage industry of blind people who are all too willing to participate in the unethical practices of law firms like the ones engaging in the unethical behavior highlighted here. I understand that there are several reasons for the participation of blind people, and I think there needs to be an open, honest discussion within our community around all of this. So maybe my addition should be a resolution for next year. For now though, I think the NFB deserves a lot of credit for bringing this matter up as a policy suggestion for the organization, and I really do hope it passes. Good job to whichever member wrote this, and to the organization as a whole for not dismissing it.

Both MIT and Harvard have argued in court filings that they should not be required to provide closed captions for every video they create or host on their websites. After the institutions’ first attempt to dismiss the cases was denied, there was a yearlong attempt to reach a settlement out of court. When that attempt failed, the universities again moved to dismiss the cases.
Judge Katherine A. Robertson of the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts largely rejected the universities’ second attempt to dismiss the cases. On March 28, Robertson denied the institutions’ pleas for the exclusion of their websites from Title III of the Americans With Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. Title III of the ADA prohibits disability discrimination by “places of public accommodation.” Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in programs that receive federal funding.

My eyes are stuck in the rolled position, and this time I think it’s permanent. I may be missing something, but the only exception for captions in WCAG SC 1.2.2 or its “Understanding” documentation is for content which is a transcript of the video or audio. I’m not deaf, and I’m getting tired of the excuses for lack of captions or transcriptions. How many times does some variation of “it’s not popular enough” or “I can’t afford it” or “it’s too hard” have to be tossed out? People and organizations will spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars on audio or video equipment, only to then not caption or transcribe the content they create. And Harvard and MIT both are schools which could afford to transcribe their content, so hearing from them that they care about accessibility as long as it means they don’t have to caption all of their content is especially galling. I suppose if we’re talking about a podcast that’s just starting out, or a one-man shop, I could see why you might not come out of the gate with captions/transcripts. But even that only works to a point. If you’re pouring hundreds of dollars into a good headset or other higher-end audio equipment, then at some point you should be making arrangements for captions or transcriptions. It goes without saying that Harvard and MIT aren’t in the one-man-shop category.