Make WordPress Accessible

Recent Updates Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • GrahamArmfield 9:46 am on January 11, 2013 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , usability, video   

    User Videos – An Accessibility Angle 

    Over the last few months WP dev lessbloat has done a series of videos where he has invited in ‘real-life’ users to try out various features of the WordPress backend – and has videoed the experience.

    I’ve watched many of these videos and read the transcripts of the interactions and they are a really great insight into usability, and assumptions that developers make about how much users understand about what’s expected of them. The most recent one is at: http://make.wordpress.org/ui/2013/01/09/two-more-menus-user-tests-focusing-on-this/

    I’ve often thought that it would be quite revealing if somehow we could produce a series of videos of blind and motor impaired users trying out key bits of the admin area. These would highlight the accessibility issues perhaps more than words on a page could, and could constitute a powerful benchmark on which to base future improvements.

    Does anyone else think this might be useful? And if so, how could we go about making some?

     

    • Joseph Karr O'Connor 10:31 am on January 11, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      User testing is a powerful tool and can be very revealing.

      When the users being tested are local, for this type of usability testing I use Silverback by Clearleft Limited. It captures screen actions and embeds a video of the user in the frame. The user is captured by the built-in camera in the computer. Silverback is for Mac. http://silverbackapp.com

      This is not the only scenario. Remote user testing is also available. Here is an article listing some of the companies that do this: http://www.actualinsights.com/2012/free-remote-user-testing/

      Finally, asking for free participation in such studies is a sensitive issue in the disability community.

      The CSUN conference is coming up soon. I will devise some tests – I will take input from this group about the focus of those tests. I will put out a call for people to meet with me at the conference to do some testing. I will capture the experience with Silverback. I would like to offer something to participants – a Starbucks card for example – is there any budget for this?

      • GrahamArmfield 10:51 am on January 11, 2013 Permalink | Reply

        Thanks for your reply Joe.

        I’ve also seen some very useful accessibility tests of some websites that were done via sharing the screens over Skype and recording the results via Camtasia studio. Perhaps not as sophisticated but valuable nevertheless.

        The issue about budget is a good one. I’m not close enough in to the WP organisation to know about that – Esmi may have to comment on that. It would be interesting to find out if lessbloat gets a budget for his vids and gives his paricipants anything.

        Your idea about CSUN is a good one. For my money the focus should definitely be on things that are obviously not accessible – like Custom Menu Builder, etc. But it would be good to test the whole process of adding a new post with some media and some links and headings within the page. After all, that’s the key functionality that needs to work for everyone. Itwould also be nice to test things where the situation has improved recently after the tickets that got included within 3.5.

        Another issue is how widely these videos are publicised if they ever get made. My natural gut feel is that full public airing is good – for knowledge, and as a spur to improve. But I know that perhaps not everyone might agree with that.

        • Joseph Karr O'Connor 2:36 am on January 12, 2013 Permalink | Reply

          I’ll post the videos on YouTube and promote them to the accessibility and WordPress communities. I can’t do this alone. I will commit to getting people to engage in some focused testing. I cannot afford the time to CC the videos and provide audio description, which the videos will need. We’ll need someone to do that.

          • GrahamArmfield 8:06 am on January 13, 2013 Permalink | Reply

            I’m willing to help with this Joseph.

            Creating captions is not necessarily difficult but can be time consuming. But I’ve done some recent experiments and the facility within YouTube to create a captions file from a transcript actually works really well most times. Now it’s a lot easier to crowdsource the production of a transcript for a video than a caption file directly.

            With transcripts, you or I can upload into YouTube to use as the raw material for a caption. It’s then possible to hack the YouTube caption file where the auto-syncing hasn’t worked so well.

            So a possible workflow for each video would be:

            1. Shoot and edit video, and upload to YouTube.
            2. When someone has created a transcript we upload that to YouTube and go with the transcript-fed captions.
            3. Where necessary, people identify segments where the captions aren’t synching right and one of us tweaks as required.

            By the way, you’ll not be surprised to hear that the auto-captioning facility within YouTube is laughably bad.

            Do you need to create a WordPress Accessibility YouTube account? Is that the best idea? What does everyone else think?

            • Joseph Karr O'Connor 7:43 am on January 14, 2013 Permalink

              I believe we should start a WordPress Accessibility channel on YouTube only if we expect to regularly post to it. Otherwise, if I do a few user testing videos I can just post to my own channel.

            • Joseph Karr O'Connor 7:46 am on January 14, 2013 Permalink

              Thanks Graham, I’ve captioned lots of videos and know how time consuming it can be.

      • esmi 11:54 am on January 11, 2013 Permalink | Reply

        As far as I am aware there are no budgets available to anyone via wordpress.org. Where people do have access to user testing & video facilities, I would imagine that they are being provided as a form of sponsorship via their employers.

        • Joseph Karr O'Connor 2:19 am on January 12, 2013 Permalink | Reply

          Will WordPress have a presence at the CSUN conference? I will see if people will attend a WP Accessibility group Tweetup.

        • GrahamArmfield 8:08 am on January 13, 2013 Permalink | Reply

          Esmi, do you know lessbloat? Can you ask him how he goes about it, and whether he’d be up for doing any with user with disabilities? I’ve suggested it at least once in my comments on his posts but not had any response from him.

    • esmi 11:50 am on January 11, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      I think this would be an excellent idea and is very much in line with my hopes of building up a pan-disability panel of users within this group.

    • Nelson 12:45 pm on January 11, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      Joseph, that website you provided on actualinsights.com is great. I see that they have an app for iPads and iPhones–which to me, is huge. I had been looking a LONG time for something like this…..THANK YOU.

      http://www.actualinsights.com/2012/ux-recorder-screen-recording-app-for-ipad-iphone/

    • Sveta 9:20 pm on January 11, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      It is also important that videos are captioned and transcribed for those who cannot hear. None of WordPress.tv videos are captioned at all – to say nothing about many other online videos on other websites.

      • Cyndy Otty 5:05 pm on January 12, 2013 Permalink | Reply

        I don’t believe WordPress.tv has the ability as yet to transcribe videos. Though, even a separate text document/page/whatever would be beneficial in lieu of an actual transcription until something changes. Even something as simple as a detailed description of the video could be helpful.

        • Joseph Karr O'Connor 2:33 am on January 13, 2013 Permalink | Reply

          WCAG and Section 508 both require that video be captioned. Transcripts may be posted as a stop-gap measure until the video is captioned. Detailed description does not meet the criteria for success. Captioning services can deliver finished captioning quickly and economically when organizations don’t have the labor to do the job.

          The larger question for us all is: do we want to include all users, or do we find it acceptable that some are excluded?

          • GrahamArmfield 8:19 am on January 13, 2013 Permalink | Reply

            Good question Joe. My view is that we should aim to include all users, but understanding that that is not always possible – certainly initially.

            You’ll see my comments elsewhere about the provision of captions and how that could work. Cyndy’s point about wordpress.tv and captions is important. Captions isn’t the only accessibility issue with wordpress.tv.

            I think signed versions might be something that might be hard to deliver on a limited budget, and I’m not sure about adding audio descriptions.

        • GrahamArmfield 7:50 am on January 13, 2013 Permalink | Reply

          wordpress.tv has many problems with accessibility – eg lack of captions, and poor keyboard accessibility. It really needs to change.

          If WordPress wants to host the videos themselves then they need to embed them with a player that is keyboard accessible and supports captions.

          I’ve done a bit of work using the player that is available from Nomensa (http://www.nomensa.com/about/news-items/nomensas-accessible-media-player-20-now-free-download) which is pretty good for accessibility (keyboard control, captions) but with some limitations.

          I’ve created a crude WP plugin that incorporates it which I’ve used on a couple of sites. It’s not on general release as it’s nowhere near finished. But it works with videos hosted on YouTube.

          The biggest limitation of the Nomensa player at the moment is that for YouTube vids the player always uses flash which means that it’s not natively available on iPads and iPhones. However, if you’re hosting the vids yourself it can allegedly pull in the JWPlayer which allows delivery using the HTML5 video object on browsers that support it – should include iOS devices.

          Maybe consideration of the accessibility of wordpress.tv needs another thread – it’s a big subject.

    • esmi 1:51 pm on January 14, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      Maybe consideration of the accessibility of wordpress.tv needs another thread

      Agreed – as that might be edging to wards the edge of our remit. One area that is definitely within our remit is to review all videos used in support documentation – such as those being incorporated into the new User Handbook.

    • esmi 1:53 pm on January 14, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      do you know lessbloat?

      Not spoken to him myself but I will try contacting him for details.

  • esmi 11:35 pm on January 10, 2013 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: support   

    Accessibillty Questions on the Support Forums 

    I’ve been trying to think of how we can provide better support for theme devs, plugin authors and site owners on the WordPress forums. I seem to recall someone asking about a dedicated Accessibility forum but, sadly, I don’t think there’s enough in terms of traffic to warrant such a forum yet.

    However, what we could do is to use a dedicated tag — ie accessibility — to make finding these kinds of support posts a lot easier. with the RSS feed for the tag pulled into here as well. I could also ask the support forum mods to add the tag to any topic that they felt needed special attention.

    Thoughts?

     

    • Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 12:39 am on January 11, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      I think that’s a great idea :) As forum mods, we should (could) be betetr about tagging things too.

    • Joe Dolson 5:14 am on January 11, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      That seems like a great idea to me, too. All my time in the support forums tends to need to be dedicated to plug-in support, so it’s hard for me to do much more than that, but if it was there I’d definitely check in on it periodically.

    • Graham Armfield 9:03 am on January 11, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      Great idea Esmi.

    • esmi 10:09 am on January 11, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      I’ve added the feed to all accessibility tagged forum posts to the bottom of the sidebar here. Off to ask the forum mod team if they can add the tag where they feel it’s appropriate,.

    • Nelson 12:37 pm on January 11, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      Absolutely, a great idea!

    • Andrea Rennick 2:58 pm on January 13, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      Yes, we should – it will help quantify the need as well. :)

  • esmi 1:16 pm on January 10, 2013 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: development, , tools   

    Just published a new page of Useful Tools. If you know of any plugins or development tools that can help to raise the accessibility of a site, theme or plugin, please let us know.

     

    • GrahamArmfield 1:57 pm on January 10, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      I would encourage any developer who is interested in building and/or testing for accessibility to download a copy of the NVDA screen reader. It’s a fully functional screen reader, almost as good as JAWS, and is now the screen reader of choice for many blind and dyslexic users. What’s more, it’s free.

      It works best on Firefox and IE – Chrome doesn’t support all the necessary accessibility API stuff (thanks Google). It’s possible to download a version that you can place onto a memory stick so that it’s portable – something I don’t think you can do with JAWS.

      Not surprisingly there are lots of keyboard shortcuts to learn, but there are some tutorial videos available I believe, and lists of the most useful keystrokes on the web.

      It’s available at: http://www.nvda-project.org/

      • esmi 2:08 pm on January 10, 2013 Permalink | Reply

        I’ve just (literally) finished writing a piece for book on web accessibility and I’ve actually said the complete reverse. For what it’s worth, here are my views on this subject:

        Don’t try using assistive technology yourself. Using a demo screen reader for a few hours will NOT give you a good overview of how visually impaired users navigate sites. Many of these users will have been using their particular software daily for years. Implementing changes based on your few hours of experience is likely to do more damage than good. Instead, make the best of the many accessiblity resources that are available on the Web.

        • Cyndy Otty 7:31 pm on January 10, 2013 Permalink | Reply

          I’m going to side with esmi on this one. At the end of the day, you’re always going to have the ability to actually see what’s on the screen. Also, as I said in a comment below, testing one piece of software is not indicative of all adaptive set ups. Screen readers are often used in conjunction with other equipment, too, like Braille displays.

          Certainly I don’t hold a monopoly on the screen reader using population, but NVDA being a popular choice is news to me. VoiceOver is probably the second most used that I’m aware of and I’d venture to say that it’s mostly because it’s much easier and cost effective to buy a system that has accessibility options built in over spending thousands of dollars to accomplish the same thing.

    • Nelson 8:41 pm on January 10, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      esmi, Cyndy, your reactions are so surprising to me. These insights are pure gold. Like Graham, I had viewed the use of technology such as NVDA invaluable; I would have never in a million years predicted such a response as “Dont try using assistive technology yourself”. (Although after further reading I think I see what you are getting at).

      I honestly do not know how else to become familiar with a technology except to use it myself. I guess I’m a little intimidated, no, intimidated a LOT by the fact I simply don’t know how to incorporate changes to address assistive technology without being familiar with the technology first hand.

      These conversations are giving me a LOT to chew on, and cause me to very seriously reconsider our current approach to learn and adapt accessible technologies. Graham, esmi, and Cyndy, thank you.

      • esmi 11:14 pm on January 10, 2013 Permalink | Reply

        My opinions on this come out of discussions with Jim Thatcher – a guru in the field of web accessibility who also built some of the very first screen readers. He reckoned it would take a solid couple of hours every day for at least a month before a web developer was close to using JAWS in the same way as the average non-sighted user would. Anything less than that and any assumptions made could be seriously invalid. There’s a lot of info out there on how assistive technology is used by real people every day. You might find that a lot more useful than trying to use the technology yourself.

    • Graham Armfield 9:27 am on January 11, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      Esmi, I can see where your opinions are coming from, and yes there is a danger that a short use of a screen reader (say) will not give you an accurate view of the way that expert users use that particular tool. Surely there are as many different approaches to using screen readers as there are screen reader users – isn’t there a parallel with an operating system here?

      Yes there are many resources on the web – including videos of visually impaired people using screen readers etc, and I do encourage people I talk to about accessibility to use those too. But when I present on web accessibility to developers and others the bits where I demo screen readers and speech recognition stimulate a lot of interest. To be able to show people the direct affect of adding appropriate alt attributes to images, and properly marked up labels to input fields is gold.

      My comments on the rising popularity of NVDA come from views gleaned from various blogs and from the WebAim Screen Reader survey – http://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey4

      I’m just starting to learn VoiceOver myself now – having just got my first iOS device.

      • Nelson 2:02 pm on January 11, 2013 Permalink | Reply

        Much to digest here. What limited experience I’ve had supports esmi and Cyndy’s claim about the use of an assistive technology by a user who actually doesn’t NEED the technology. I had built up a website, adjusting all HTML and CSS based on what I found on the web so that screen readers could use it–and when I found out the blind user did not use ANY of the special features I had built into the website (e.g., skip-to-navigation links), but instead used standard HTML markup, I was stunned. He pulled out his laptop, and a Windows-based technology ran through the page so quickly my head spun. I literally could not keep up with him.

        BUT I find personally that the biggest problem in supporting accessibility iniitiatives is–getting support! There is no substitute, none, for bringing the point home to sighted, able-bodied administrators and staff what it is like to be blind, immobile, or whatever, and still be asked to function. To date, the only way to bring this home is to give demonstrations of what it’s like to try and function with a disability. Only then does the grumbling stop about adding “alt tags” and such.

        And what I said earlier still holds true, at least for me personally–in order to write a website in an accessible manner, I can’t just “read” about it on the web–I personally have to go through some sort of experience to make me understand, in my guts, what’s happening when a blind person approaches a web page, or a person with a mobility issue tries to access a drop-down menu, etc.

        The crux of the matter is, how a sighted person like me realisticly gains insights into working a web page without being blind. Again, incredibly valuable insights provided here, and I thank you all.

      • Cyndy Otty 2:08 pm on January 11, 2013 Permalink | Reply

        Sorry if I came across contrary about the NVDA popularity. I don’t dispute your point, though, I’ve never actually heard of that survey and I am kind of curious how accurate a sampling that it has. I mean in context, the US alone there are an estimated 21.5 million persons with vision loss.

    • Nelson 3:14 pm on January 11, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      Cyndy, I personally didn’t feel that the comment was contrary at all. And, the implied point about sample size is a valid concern. Almost by default, sample sizes for any accessibility testing are going to be small, because of the difficulty of rounding up enough participants for a study. That very fact alone, that accessibility testing is based upon studies with small sample sizes, mandates a critical eye towards the studies, and their implications of applying the results to our applications. I didn’t feel your words were contrary. I felt they were wise. And invaluable to people like me who only know how to approach accessibility initiatives through the mechanical lens of technology. Thanks again!

      • Cyndy Otty 5:10 pm on January 12, 2013 Permalink | Reply

        Thanks, Nelson. :-)

        My own personal experience and having worked in the rehab field, I do know there tends to be a large difference in what equipment and software is used based on age (e.g., college student vs. professional) and each state (and even each district within a state) has their own specific standards.as to what they will or won’t provide. Which is to say, what is a preferred set up is not necessarily what is most often being used.

  • esmi 1:25 pm on January 9, 2013 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: feedback,   

    We now have a form that allows assistive technology users to send us their feedback via email. My guess is that not everyone is comfortable contributing to a public discussion here. Longer term, I’m also hoping that we can build up a pan-disability panel of users who would be willing to help with testing.

     

    • Cyndy Otty 1:53 pm on January 9, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      I’ll spread the link around, esmi! And, I’m certainly more than happy to help out in any way that I can.

  • esmi 12:24 pm on January 9, 2013 Permalink | Reply
    Tags:   

    Stumbled across the Accessibility Widget plugin last night which looks very interesting. I intend to test it out as soon as I have some free time but has anyone else used it on a live site? I was thinking that we could have a page here listing similar useful plugins and tools.

     

    • Rian Rietveld 1:14 pm on January 9, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      Thanks for the tip @esmi

    • GrahamArmfield 1:48 pm on January 10, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      Hadn’t seen that one before but will have a look. There is also wp-chgfontsize which I have used on a couple of sites in the past but hasn’t been updated for a while now.

  • GrahamArmfield 12:07 pm on January 9, 2013 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , media manager   

    3.5 Media Manager Accessibility 

    Has anyone had a chance to test the accessibility of the new Media Manager that came in with 3.5? I’ve not had time yet, but I am worried that it’s not fully keyboard accessible.

     

    • esmi 12:20 pm on January 9, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      I’ve run a quick test and it’s not too bad. The big issue in my tests was that I kept losing sight of the current focus, so better focus highlighting is definitely needed.

      The big grey area for me was at the point when I brought up the browse window to select the file I wanted to upload. I wasn’t sure how to select the file I wanted using keyboard alone. That’s really more of a problem with my experience than the interface but it did raise an interesting thought – where does WP’s remit stop when using standard operations like browsing your own machine? I don’t want to de-rail any discussion of the new Media Manager but I think we do have to keep in mind that there are points when an applications responsibility ends and the user has to take responsibility for learning how to use their own software. In my experience, it’s a point that can sometimes be overlooked in the (admirable) enthusiasm to make web applications as accessible as possible.

      • GrahamArmfield 12:34 pm on January 9, 2013 Permalink | Reply

        I think you are right Esmi, there is definitely a boundary between WP screens and functions and operating system screens and functions. And WordPress cannot be responsible for the operating system bit – we have to trust that people can learn to use the appropriate functionality of their machines. I know that doesn’t always happen but it’s outside of our scope.

        I just had another quick look at the Media Manager panel. I think tabbing goes ok as far as the search box, but after that I believe it actually goes back to links on the underlying post/page edit screen. But I’m not certain about that.

        • esmi 12:59 pm on January 9, 2013 Permalink | Reply

          I believe it actually goes back to links on the underlying post/page edit screen

          I had a similar issue and thought I’d make a mistake. I’ll take another crack at it as soon as I can.

  • esmi 3:56 pm on January 8, 2013 Permalink | Reply
    Tags:   

    Menus 

    Graham Armfield has asked for the Menu UI to receive some accessibility attention.
    Associated Trac link.

     

    • Graham Armfield 9:43 am on January 9, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      Thanks for posting about that Esmi, I believe it is vital that everyone who maintains a site in WordPress should be able to fully create their own menus.

      Of course at the moment the order of menu items and the hierarchy can’t be changed without the ability to drag and drop – an alien concept for some people and for some assistive technology like screen readers.

      Sighted keyboard users can manipulate menus if they know about mouse keys, and speech recognition users can do drag and drop commands although it’s hard to get things precise enough some times.

      But, how to make the menu builder accessible to everyone?

      Is the best way to add an accessible option – similar to the one that exists for managing Widgets (which has similar-ish functionality)?

      Or is there another way that would work better for everyone?

      And (perhaps similar to other areas within WP) are there sufficient instructions clearly available so that everyone understands what they are changing and how to go about it?

      • esmi 11:48 am on January 9, 2013 Permalink | Reply

        Adding an accessibility option similar to the widgets one has to be the absolute minimum fallback, in my opinion. I’ve already seen calls elsewhere on the support forums for it to be added to menus. It would also lend itself nicely to some sort of consistency across the WordPress UI.

        Are there any other web applications with accessible drag and drop functionality that we could use as a best practice model?

        • Cyndy Otty 1:56 pm on January 9, 2013 Permalink | Reply

          From the standpoint of a blind person “accessible drag-and-drop” is kind of an oxymoron . . . it’s inherently a mouse-user feature and those are notoriously difficult, if not impossible to translate to use for a screen-reader user.

          • esmi 2:17 pm on January 9, 2013 Permalink | Reply

            Do you find the accessibility option in the Widgets section useful? Would a similar option for Menus help?

            • Cyndy Otty 2:20 pm on January 9, 2013 Permalink

              I do actually. I think I’ve voiced a similar suggestion for that in the Menu screen before. (Seems like something I’d natter on about.)

      • GrahamArmfield 9:48 am on January 11, 2013 Permalink | Reply

        Just to let everyone know there is a whole load of debate about the UI for Menus going on over at: http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/23119 but so far there is no mention of accessibility in there.

  • esmi 3:51 pm on January 8, 2013 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: revisons core   

    WordPress 3.6: Revisions 

    The Core team are about to start looking at some improvements around the Post/Page revisions. From an a11y perspective, the Compare Revisions display needs some serious work. It’s currently a tabled form with no labels and multiple links with identical text. So I’ve put forwards some suggestions for changes.

     

    • GrahamArmfield 10:12 am on January 9, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      Good for flagging this up Esmi. Have you seen the latest idea with the red and green dots or lines? Colourblindness anyone?

      • esmi 11:42 am on January 9, 2013 Permalink | Reply

        The use of progress-type bars is pretty poor on all fronts, in my opinion. Stick with numbers and I think most potential access barriers would be by-passed. Plus you’d get rid of most of the “Uh?” factor that I think would be the immediate response of pretty much all users.

        The colour combinations are also pretty awful. This screenshot shows how the red/green display would look to sufferers of the two most common forms of color blindness (approx 10% of all males, potentially). If anyone is interested, that screenshot was made using the free Color Contrast Analyser desktop tool.

        • Nelson 12:56 pm on January 9, 2013 Permalink | Reply

          The link for Clor Contrast Analyser is great–thanks for passing that on!

  • esmi 3:43 pm on January 8, 2013 Permalink | Reply  

    Ways to Organise the Accessibility Initiative 

    Since the news that some WordPress teams are to be merged, I’ve been thinking (a lot) about this group might move forward. First off, I need to say that I do understand why it might be necessary to merge some groups. Too much fragmentation is as bad as an overly centralised system when trying to manage/coordinate work whilst also ensuring a constant trickle of new blood.

    But I don’t think merging is the answer for this group. Accessibility is too over-arching an area to work well if we try to split it down into separate groups. We’re likely to lose impetus with over-dilution, Plus we will loose the opportunity to attract assistive technology users who could, longer term, become a panel of expert testers. We actively need an ongoing dialogue between technical developers and non-technical users to help wordpress.org develop effective accessible solutions.

    So I feel that we need to stay as a separate group but with direct links into the other groups – possibly via designated lead developers.

    If that’s possible, then we’ll also need to work hard to coordinate and communicate the changes that are taking place — both in terms of what we’ve achieved and to highlight work in other groups where we might be able to contribute. To that end, I’m going to see if I can pull in feeds from some of the other groups to see if will help us to highlight areas where we need to get involved.

    If you’re already involved in discussions in other groups or in Trac, then please let us know what you are doing via a status update here. If you do not have posting privileges here, let me know and I’ll sort that out for you.

    In the meantime, if anyone has any other ideas of how we can ficus our efforts more effectively, then please chime in.

     

    • Nelson 3:52 pm on January 8, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      esmi, by all means, if there is a way that non-technical people such as myself could help with testing, please let us know. Accessibility is so crucial to making knowledge available to those without the privilege of health and wealth.

      The one idea I have for “focusing” attention on accessibility issues is unfortunately, to divide them up. It’s amazing to me how “different” the technology must be to address “different” accessibility needs–and I find that expertise in one area (e.g., blindness) does not lead to expertise in other areas (e.g., mobility issues)–so possibly breaking down groups by accessibility needs would help, I think.

      Also, I am stunned at some of the assistive technology available on iPads. Perhaps, if some attention could be given to making WordPress work on iPad technology, that alone would help many who depend on the technology.

      I also want to say, THANK YOU for what you do here. It matters.

      Best regards.

    • esmi 4:26 pm on January 8, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      Dividing issues up into areas based on “need” or technology tends to create as many problems as it solves, in my experience because the needs of one group can run counter to the other (visual impairment versus dyslexia immediately springs to mind). What is really needed are solutions that balance disparate needs without skewing towards any one group — including those without any special need. Those of us with a technical background in accessibility tend to approach any one situation by looking at it through “different eyes” so that we get a broad idea of what barriers exist for different groups and how to correct them without creating new ones in the process.

      With regards to how you can help — firstly, tell us about any specific problems you are facing. We try to identify problem areas but we undoubtedly miss some. So we need people like yourself to keep us on our toes and point out the problems.

      Secondly, if you are interested in joining an expert panel of testers, please contact me using esmi [at] quirm [dot] net. And thank you for your comments,

    • Nelson 4:52 pm on January 8, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      esmi, thank you for the rapid response.

      The problem is that I am trying to set up a website for a wide variety of users. It’s for a public institution, which fortunately, by law, requires accessibility, but means accessibility for all disabilities.

      The site expertise seems to be with blind users, but from the limited exposure I’ve had with testing, the blind user did not use the features we built into the site for the screen readers. The screen readers seem to rely on technology that is one generation behind–they haven’t caught up to HTML5 standards. This is fine, as I find that HTML5 standards aren’t widely supported by browsers yet and don’t really add anything to accessibility.

      He surprised us, and largely used simple HTML markup to navigate, which is why I’m so adamant about building site using old HTML markup standards h1, then h2, etc. and keeping it simple in terms of markup, CSS, and navigation. And, from what I understand, basic HTML markup is very friendly to assistive technology; it’s when people get fancy with the markup that assistive technology runs into problems. But the point is that if we keep the HTML clean, I think we’ve got the blind users covered.

      However, building a site for a public institution can’t just be about blind users. Although we haven’t yet had a user with mobility and/or physical restriction issues, I certainly expect such a user to come to the site. We’ve got a lot of wounded veterans out there who (hopefully) will take advantage of what the institution offers.

      I hope that helps. I will certainly contact you, and again, thankyou for all you do.

    • esmi 5:08 pm on January 8, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      “if we keep the HTML clean, I think we’ve got the blind users covered.”

      Yes. If you can go one step further and validate your markup, you’ll cover many of the issues faced by blind users. Also have a look at some of the articles on accessites.org. You should find them helpful in developing a balanced approach to a11y.

    • Andrew Ozz 8:29 pm on January 8, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      I feel that we need to stay as a separate group but with direct links into the other groups…

      Thinking so too. Accessibility is an integral part of the UI. However “getting it right” requires several different types of testing and feedback that are quite different from the “standard” UI and graphic design work.

      We shouldn’t be making any changes or creating new UI components without them being tested for accessibility. In that terms having the “expert panel of testers” is most important. The next thing would be to encourage users of assistive technology to report bugs and inconsistencies.

    • Joe Dolson 8:43 pm on January 8, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      Right now, I’m focused on trying to get the accessibility-ready theme tag up and moving. I’m working on adding the appropriate checks to the theme-check plug-in, so that I can send those over when they’re ready. If anybody would like to help, that would be great.

      • esmi 8:53 pm on January 8, 2013 Permalink | Reply

        Anything I can do to help, just holler..

    • Graham Armfield 9:26 am on January 9, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      On balance I think that accessibility should kept as a separate group. Although accessibility needs to become part of all the other groups too, having a separate group hopefully can allow us to keep a real cohesive focus.

      The challenge, I feel, is to convince enough of the core developers of WordPress to even think about accessibility when they are building the new bits of functionality into the core or updating existing parts. Look at the experience with Theme Customizer – it was just completely impossible to use without a mouse when developed. That was addressed in 3.5 as a result of a trac ticket, but that’s a poor way of ensuring accessibility of WordPress – retrofitting always is difficult and wastes time.

      How we get accessibility more mainstream within WordPress?

      Maybe by getting as much action going on within this forum as possible – including from people with disabilities/impairments who have not currently contributed. Would that help? Would some kind of WP accessibility mission statement help? I’d like to think so.

      Esmi, please can you give me the ability to post new discussions on this forum. Thanks.

      Graham

      • esmi 12:06 pm on January 9, 2013 Permalink | Reply

        How we get accessibility more mainstream within WordPress?

        We join as many relevant development, UI and core discussions as we can so that, with each change, we push for any accessibility changes needed and guard against new barriers being introduced. Sure – that may turn us into the proverbial bad pennies is some places but, if we prod people enough times, they may start starting thinking about accessibility before being prompted.

        including from people with disabilities/impairments who have not currently contributed. Would that help?

        Absolutely! We need feedback, ideas and comments from users with disabilities/impairments. Not technical points but more along the lines of “I use foo software and I find it really difficult/impossible to use bar on my site”. Give us areas that need improvement and we can take them to the people who make the changes. I’d also love to hear from anyone using assistive technology who would be interested in being part of a testing panel. I’m hoping to set up a contact form especially for this purpose shortly.

        can you give me the ability to post new discussions

        You now have full access. Sorry about that. I didn’t realise you weren’t in the list of users here.

        • Cyndy Otty 2:17 pm on January 9, 2013 Permalink | Reply

          I’d also love to hear from anyone using assistive technology who would be interested in being part of a testing panel.

          I’m more than happy to help with testing stuff. And this is actually very key because much like everyone has their own computer set up (e.g., operating system, browser, etc.) so too are adaptive tech set ups and they all work differently, have their own issues, etc.

  • Jane Wells 5:40 pm on December 24, 2012 Permalink
    Tags:   

    Team Rep Voting Results 

    When only one active team member votes, it’s tough to think there’s much interest in team repping. :)

    So, here are the results, but the low turnout begs the question of if this is an active team, or if we should be thinking about rolling in to existing groups (like UI is rolling into the main core group and designers will be embedded in all the other teams as well with a central design “interest group” vs a “responsible-for-this-product group”). But before we have that conversation, here are the voting results.

    Only three people actually voted.
    Please describe your role with the accessibility team.

    • 1 – I don’t participate yet, but want to
    • 1 – I am not currently active in the group, but have been in the past
    • 1 – I am active in the group, and have been within the past 3 months
    • 0 – I don’t plan to get involved

    Describe your accessibility team activity.

    • 1 – I contribute accessibility info to the Codex
    • 1 – Other Option (“Working on developing accessibility-ready tag for theme directory”)
    • 1 – I don’t contribute to the accessibility team activities
    • 1 – I participate in plugin and theme reviews for wordpress.org directory
    • 1 – I contribute to discussions on the blog
    • 0 – I contribute to core patches

    Votes:
    1st rep – 3 votes for Esmi
    2nd rep – One for Joe, one for Graham, one for Andrew Ozz

    Neither Esmi or Graham voted. Esmi also proposed that she step back to the support role in the previous thread about team reps. The comment in that thread by Graham made it sound like he equates accessibility team with core accessibility. In short, it doesn’t feel particularly teamy up in here. An active team should have enough going on that each week there’s stuff to report. That’s the team rep job — to write the weekly reports on activity and issues facing the team.

    Given the givens, my inclination is to ask Esmi to remain the point of contact for this group, and once we’re past the winter holidays, to work out what exactly falls within the scope of this group/what the product it’s responsible for is, and go from there to a decision around whether this is in fact a distinct project team or whether it’s an interest/skills group that contributes to multiple project teams (like design will be). If it’s decided then that it is in fact a distinct project team, we’ll figure out what to do about the lack of participation in the team rep voting re 2nd slot. Sound okay?

     

    • Cyndy Otty 6:31 pm on December 24, 2012 Permalink | Reply

      I reiterate my last comment of stating I am very against the idea of folding Accessibility into another group. While I understand the lack of activity here and all playing into that idea, I have a lifetime of experience dealing with similar issues being folded into others and the results are generally not favorable.

      Also, I can only speak for myself, but I didn’t vote because I was waiting to see if Graham would respond to Esmi about being the second . . . and then I realized voting was over and I had missed my chance. I would have voted for Esmi and Graham, fwiw.

    • Joe Dolson 10:18 pm on December 24, 2012 Permalink | Reply

      I would have voted for Graham, had he responded, but didn’t want to be volunteering somebody without their indication of interest. The low voter turnout had a lot to do with the lack of any expression of desire to actually be the team leader – there was little idea who to vote for.

      I think it’s a very fair question about the role of this team: is accessibility a separate group, or is it an essential part of all groups? But if it’s an essential part of all groups, are there enough people involved to be able to effectively contribute to all groups?

      I think it’s crucial that accessibility be a voice in core, UI, and theming: but I’m afraid that the issues for accessibility get overlooked in those larger environments.

      Regardless, having a post-holidays discussion of the future role of The Accessibility team seems like a practical choice to me.

    • Rian Rietveld 8:12 am on December 26, 2012 Permalink | Reply

      Sorry for not responding earlier. Esmi and Graham both would have my vote. If Esmi would like the job, that’s totally ok with me. I agree with Cindy: I am very against the idea of folding Accessibility into another group. But I also know this means a real commitment from us as a group.
      So: I don’t participate yet (that much) but in the next year I will do my best to add to the discussion and research.

    • N Johnson 9:59 pm on December 26, 2012 Permalink | Reply

      I create small volunteer WordPress sites. I have your feed in my RSS page, but find this feed frustrating and don’t pay much attention to it. My day job has nothing to do with WordPress but in my role as Front-end developer I am responsible for accessibility I am used to having much more control over CSS, jquery etc than plugins allow, unless I dig which I often do.

      I haven’t read the entire thread, so if someone else has thought of this I apologize, but has anyone thought of why each image requires a “title” tag but not an “alt”. Why not merge them into one required “Description” field, that spits out alt and title.

      • Joe Dolson 12:24 am on December 28, 2012 Permalink | Reply

        Well, this is off topic for the current thread, but I can give you a partial answer: it is not a good solution to combine title and alt, largely because there are situations where those two fields should be different. In fact, in most situations, they should be different. Requiring the alt attribute is problematic because purely decorative images should have blank alt attributes. In many cases, neither the title attribute nor the alt attribute would have any content — and this would be considered accessible.

        Practically speaking, there should be a required title field for the image, so that there’s a title characteristic saved with the record. But then it should be a separate title from the one used in the image when inserted. From an interface standpoint, however, that’s confusing as hell…as a result, it really needs to be a content developer’s responsibility to handle appropriate title and alt attribute usages.

    • GrahamArmfield 9:04 am on December 29, 2012 Permalink | Reply

      Apologies for not taking part in the vote, I have been really busy with client work just recently which obviously has to take precedence. But I have to admit I must have forgotten to check the box to receive follow up comments – so the date just slipped by.

      I’m flattered to receive some (real/virtual) votes and sorry that people were waiting round for me to reply. It’s academic now but I would not have been able to commit at this stage to being a rep at this time. I’m hoping to get more active in the future so maybe next time I’ll feel able to put myself forward.

      Agree that we should debate where this forum should go and what’s within its remit.

      I hope you all had a good Christmas time.

    • elfin 4:11 pm on December 30, 2012 Permalink | Reply

      I didn’t vote, but that was deliberate – I don’t know others posting here well enough to make an informed decision about their suitability for the role in question. So I could only vote for esmi. Joe, I wasn’t sure if you wanted to help out to that extent or you would have been on my list.

      I wish I could step up and help out more – but my current workload prohibits that.

    • Sylvia Egger 12:15 pm on January 3, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      I voted but wasn’t very comfort about it because I don’t know who is in the #a11y group right now. I would suggest that there is a kind of “group leader” who takes the effort to communicate to the group about current task and so on. I feel a little bit lost behind.

      • esmi 3:21 pm on January 8, 2013 Permalink | Reply

        Anyone who is motivated to post or comment here could be considered to be part of the a11y group. It’s not a pre-selected a group of people as such. Jane contacted me and asked If I would initially head up the a11y initiative and I went out trying to promote it anyone who I thought might be interested. We also have cross-links with the UI and Core developer groups and are trying to set up something similar with the Theme Repo team.

        If anyone would like to become involved on a more formal basis, please feel free to contact me directly (follow the link on my username).

← Older posts

c
compose new post
j
next post/next comment
k
previous post/previous comment
r
reply
e
edit
o
show/hide comments
t
go to top
l
go to login
h
show/hide help
shift + esc
cancel