If you're playing along with those of us who are taking the Gutenberg Challenge, this is my post for week two. This time, I'm using the text editor. I decided to go with the text editor this time because it's slightly easier. Sorry WordPress, not even you can win the WYSIWYG VS. text editor war. 🙂 As with the first post, these are my not-so-edited thoughts.
I spent some time mulling over this throughout the weekend, and I've decided to settle on the following working analogy. Part of this is because I cheated and looked at some of the code, as well as the generated markup. This will probably also work for widgets. So let's say that you have a bunch of magnets in different shapes and sizes. With widgets, your shapes and sizes are pretty uniform, and widget areas in themes are like metal surfaces you can stick them to. I'm thinking of a toy I got as a kid that was a big metal board/frame/rectangular surface, with letters that had magnets on the back so you could make words on the board but with the letters raised. Yeah, it's incredibly simplistic, but it works. With the introduction of Gutenberg, WordPress is just going to magnetize everything, and the pile of magnets now includes letters, numbers, special characters, punctuation, and every other shape under the sun. OK. So far so good. I think though that this has the potential to make web pages/other web things pretty much fluid from a design perspective, protean even, and I hope there's an upper limit somewhere. Something like, let's try to educate people about design principles, because hamburger menus inside posts, and I would like to reserve some things for the CSS/HTML realm. I know we're democratizing publishing and everything, but democracies have rules. Not sure what I think of this wp:core/freeform tag, which basically means we're using a text widget to add text to a post. I'm keeping an open mind, but it seems to me as though WordPress wants to create its own
Those of you who were around in the pre-Web 2.0 era (before 2005-ish) will remember that early bloggers used to have a list of other blogs they read in their sidebars. That list was known as the “blogroll” and it was a great way for newbies to get to know established bloggers. The other neat thing about the blogroll was that it was a token of respect to the bloggers you admired.
–RICHARD MACMANUS, AltPlatform
Blogrolls used to be a thing in WordPress, except WordPress refered to them as “Links”, and you managed them using the Links Manager. I think there’s still a working plugin for this, and if you’re like me and you’ve had a long-running WordPress installation, the links manager is still in your administration panel. I think blogrolls got an amused mention last weekend at WordCamp Europe as well, but I have to agree with the post I’m quoting. they were a fun part of the web, and I’m thinking that, they really should be brought back. I used to have quite a full blogroll, and yes, I made a point of reading most of them every day. Mine specifically didn’t have a lot of news sites on it, just blogs, mostly personal ones. I’m not saying that news sites couldn’t be listed, (the cool thing about blogrolls was that you could list whatever you wanted, and other people could see what you were reading), but I always liked to keep mine more personal and less edited.
There’s a site called WPRoll that I think still lives, but it seems to be more of a list of influencers. There is, however, an OPML file you can get that has all the blogs, that you can then import into your RSS reader. I’ve done this, and for the time being I’m using the WordPress.com reader, because it’s the most accessible one that I’ve found that I can also use on my phone.
But yes, we should definitely bring blogrolls back. The web, and the world, could use a little more let’s-get-to-know-each-other, and that’s what blogrolls provided.
Last weekend, during WordCamp Europe, Matt Mullenweg announced that Gutenberg, (the upcoming WordPress editor that will replace TinyMCE as well as become integrated into the WordPress customization experience), is now available for downloading and testing. So of course people have started playing with it, and Aaron Jorbin issued the following challenge on Twitter today.
I broke my own cardinal rule and installed this on a live site, because I need content to play with. I'll start with the good first. I appear to be able to add blocks and move them around using the visual editor part and a screen reader. Now for the not so good.
I can type a post title, but I have to add a block just to start typing text. I can see myself switching to text when this goes live, because writing a post like this is turning out to be incredibly inefficient, cumbersome even, and I'm not sure if that's because I'm just used to writing HTML and can do that in my sleep and so I don't use WYSIWYG editors, or if it's because of the software, or both. I'm also not sure if paragraphs are supposed to be in their own separate blocks although I suppose if you're going to be moving them around, they probably should be each in their own block. I can see this increasing the cumbersomeness exponentially. Right now I'm thinking of what it would be like to write one of the WordPress with a Screen Reader posts in this and I want to just crawl under my desk and never write again. I've lived in the WordPress dashboard daily since 2005, and I'm finding this really frustrating. I can see someone new to WordPress who uses a screen reader just giving up on this. Admittedly, as I mentioned above, this could all just be I'm not used to using a visual editor like this. I also realize that this is only six months along, and that it's in its early stages. I'll also continue to play with it so I can get used to this, and then explain it to other screen reader users. But I think I'm going to end here for now because this is completely overwhelming, I'm unable to separate my own experience from what's supposed to be happening and be fair and objective about this, and, (I'm only half joking here), Gutenberg is causing me to question my life choices right now.
Recently, I was told by more than one person who had a private meeting with VFO salespeople at CSUN 2017 that the guys trying to sell JAWS are telling those who buy enterprise site licenses that “NVDA is just two guys working in a garage, if they’re hit by a bus, the whole thing disappears.”
NVDA: Now More Than Ever!
I’d like to talk a little bit about the “two-guys-in-a-garage” argument. Chris goes on to demonstrate why it’s completely false in NVDA’s case. But even if it were completely true, it’s still one of the most short-sighted arguments that can be used against FLOSS. “Two-Guys-In-A-Garage” is the argument you make when you have nothing else. You can’t prove that your functionality is better, so you try to argue in favor of scarcity.
We’re at the point where Jaws for Windows, (the so-called best-in-class screen reader), is aping NVDA, (its FLOSS rival), in order to stay relevant. This is especially evident when it comes to the web, where NVDA shines and where Jaws for Windows continues to lag behind. And unfortunately for VFO, (the parent company behind Jaws for Windows), the web their screen reader struggles with is the thing that’s eating the world. Everything is going web. It’s not just pages anymore, it’s applications now too. And Jaws for Windows can’t keep up with NVDA in this arena.
I, like a lot of other people in this community, was devastated by the news that Window Eyes is being discontinued. But NVaccess and the rest of the NVDA community are providing us with the freedom and choice that the big player believes they have the right to take away from us, and this is very heartening. So NVDA, you keep being you and doing what you do best, because when VFO crashes and burns, I want to be first in line to dance on its grave with a drink in both hands.
When WebAIM evaluates a client’s website for accessibility, we often spend more time evaluating and reporting on ARIA use than any other issue. Almost every report we write includes a section cautioning against ARIA abuse and outlining ARIA uses that need to be corrected or, most often, removed. Ironically, this is often followed by a list of issues that can only be addressed with ARIA.
WebAIM – Web Accessibility In Mind
This quote gets to the heart of my own love-hate relationship with Aria. As a screen reader user, I’ve seen abuses that make me want to strangle developers. I think the worst abuse I’ve ever come across, (and I’m sorry I can’t find it again to provide a demonstration of it), was one where role=”alert” was used to deliver advertisements and calls to action on a website. And it definitely did. “Alert! Buy our stuff! Alert! Download our e-book! Alert! sign up for our mailing list! Alert! Here’s this cool article you should read about whatever hot marketing tip! http://something.something/keyword! Alert! Here’s this other cool thing you should read!” Every few seconds. I have no idea whether the site’s developers or owners or marketers were specifically intending to advertise to screen reader users, or whether they were just trying to get past ad blockers, and I don’t care. All I know is, that site enraged me more than any comments section ever could, and I couldn’t close the window and file it under “Places You Never Go on the Internets Ever Again Under Any Circumstances” fast enough. WordPressers, do not ever do this. If you build sites for clients in any capacity, do not ever do this.
Admittedly, what I’ve recounted above is an extreme case. I’ve never come across anything like it again since. I’m recounting it though because what we as web professionals and hobbyists do on the web has a real impact on people, positive or negative. Whether that impact is positive or negative is solely dependent on us. We can make the web a place for everyone to enjoy and learn and be entertained and obtain things, or we can make it a place that people want to stay as far away from as possible. It’s up to us.
During the 2016 State of the Word, it was announced that the wordPress editing experience would go through a complete redesign. As part of this redesign, the WordPress project is currently conducting a survey to find out how WordPress users experience and use the current editor. This applies to self-hosted WordPress, not WordPress.com.
Feedback from all users is important, not just from users who are advanced or who are completely familiar with how WordPress works, or who don’t use any assistive technologies. I’m taking the survey myself, and below I’ll outline some tips for screen reader users to be aware of so that taking the survey is as easy as possible, whether you’re an advanced screen reader user who spends his or her days scouring the internets, or not.
The first thing to note is on page two of the survey, where there are two sets of radio buttons. If you’re using NVDA, don’t tab through this screen. All the radio buttons have labels, but once you’re done tabbing through the first set, you’ll still be in browse mode, and focus will move to the second set. The question relating to that second set will not be in the tab order. If you do choose to tab through this screen, exit browse mode once you reach the second set of radio buttons.
The second question on page two refers to the markup editor, and is accompanied by a screenshot. The markup editor is the text or code editor.
The third question on this page is also accompanied by a screenshot, and “these buttons” refers to the series of buttons above the content field in the text editor.
On page five, instead of radio buttons or checkboxes, there are a series of comboboxes inside list elements. Page six asks a series of questions specific to screen reader users, and one of them asks if there are any accessibility issues you may be experiencing with the current experience. This applies to either the text or visual editor, and the text field will allow you to enter a lot of detail, so I would encourage you to do so. There’s also a question that asks if you use other assistive technologies along with a screen reader, so if you use multiple assistive technologies, make your voice heard. The last page is a couple of open-ended questions with standard edit fields for you to enter information.
I hope you find these tips useful, and that screen reader users make a point of taking this survey. WordPress’s mission is to democratize publishing, and screen reader and other assistive technology users are just as much a part of “everyone” as those who don’t use any assistive technology. The feedback you provide through this survey will help WordPress ensure that the new editor is accessible to as wide an audience as possible, so if you have the time, and you use a screen reader along with WordPress, I hope you’ll consider taking this survey.