Where WordPress and Accessibility meet today. Presentation from November 2014 for Accessing Higher Ground

1. Accessibility with
WordPress
Where we are today!

2. Why WordPress?
1. WordPress is a free, open source CMS powering
23% of the web.
2. WordPress has an enormous number of active users
and developers.
3. Many of the accessibility limitations in WordPress can
be easily overcome, with a little knowledge.

3. WordPress Accessibility: the problems

4. 1.Design & Layout
2.Administration
3.Features and Functionality

5. 3 Problems: Design and Layout
The public side: WordPress for web site visitors
- Inaccessible themes.
- Inherent problems in WordPress core.

6. Themes pose challenges
- Almost all of the user experience in WordPress
comes from the theme.
- Most themes are not accessible, making several
very basic mistakes..
- Finding accessible themes is very difficult.
- Building custom themes can be expensive.
- Customizing existing themes is not cheaper.

7. Some fundamental problems.
- Most of the base HTML and functionality
generated by WordPress is great
- A couple things don't quite meet specs:
- Empty searches do not return an error
- Default values for “more” links are not
specific.
- Tons of redundant title attributes
- These are all fixable in themes

8. 3 Problems: Administration
The admin side: WordPress for web site editors
1. How do you create accessible content?
2. How does the admin function with AT?

9. In December 2012, WordPress 3.5
included a swath of accessibility fixes.
What’s happened since then?

10. WordPress Accessibility since 2013:
- 3.6: Screen reader support for Custom Menus; post
versioning improvements;
- 3.7: Post row actions accessible; better color contrast
in default themes
- 3.8: Accessibility-ready Themes; improve contrast in
admin; most title attributes removed
- 3.9: Improved focus throughout admin; keyboard
access for theme install and actions
- 4.0: Major improvements to Add Media, Customizer,
help tabs, and widgets management
- 4.1: Coming soon!

11. But what’s really changed?
- Up through 3.5: Accessibility was incidental; new
features were routinely broken.
- Since 3.6: Accessibility improvements in every
release, accessibility is addressed early.

12. But what’s really changed?
- In December 2012: few tickets, little activity
- Today: 72 accessibility tickets (74, yesterday).

13. 3 Problems: Features & Functionality
Using WordPress Plug-ins
- WordPress plug-ins are all over the map
- There is little to no quality checking in the
plug-in repository.
- Even if there was, checking for accessibility
would be almost impossible to do.
- Yikes.

14. What can you do?

15. Themes
Options for Accessible themes:
o Browse the accessibility-ready themes at
https://wordpress.org/themes/tags/accessibility-
ready
o Install and configure my plugin WP Accessibility:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-
accessibility/

16. What is an ‘accessibility-ready’ theme?
- Does it conform to WCAG 2? No.
- Is it an accessible web site? No.
- It meets these guidelines:
- https://make.wordpress.org/themes/handbook/guidelin
es/accessibility/
- Who checks that? I do.

17. The WP-Accessibility plug-in:
o Removes redundant title attributes
o Enables skip links with WebKit
o Adds skip links with user-defined targets.
o Adds language and text direction attributes
o Strips the target attribute from links.
o Forces a search page error on an empty search
o Removes tabindex from elements that are
focusable.
o Strips title attributes from images in content.
o Adds post titles to "read more" links.
o Adds an outline to the :focus state for focusable
elements.

18. The WP-Accessibility plug-in also:
○ Toggles for high contrast or large font
○ Adds support for longdesc on images
○ Adds ARIA roles to HTML5 structural elements
○ Forces underlines on links
○ Provides a custom admin stylesheet.

19. What can't this plug-in do?
• Fix color contrast issues.
• Correct forms to add labels or give meaningful
errors.
• Fix heading structures for screen reader
navigation.
• Give appropriate alt attributes to images
• Correct for many other specialized
circumstances...

20. The Admin Side
o Accessibility is becoming more entwined with
normal development practices.
o That doesn’t mean everything will be fixed
tomorrow.
o Email me at joe@joedolson.com – if I can
reproduce your bug, I'll report it for you.

21. Using Plug-ins
• There are over 20,000 plug-ins in the repository.
You cannot assume that most of them are
accessible.
• Due to the nature of the WordPress.org plug-in
search engine, most of the results for 'accessible'
do not relate to accessibility.
• Most plug-ins must be vetted independently.

22. What's the summary?
• On the public side, WordPress makes very few
mistakes, and these can be corrected by a theme
or plug-in. BUT: WordPress only controls a small
percentage of the presentation of a web site.
• Currently available themes are still lacking a focus
on accessibility; but it’s now easy to find audited,
accessible themes.
• Extending WordPress via plug-ins is hazardous,
and requires careful vetting.
• The admin is improving steadily.

23. And what's coming up?
o There's momentum in the WordPress community to
improve accessibility at all levels of the project.

24. Questions?