Here we are again, at the beginning of another great rendition of WordPress! As is normal at the beginning of a cycle, here are a few big issues that the WordPress Accessibility team would like to see focused on at this stage. These are mostly large areas where usability and accessibility need some concerted effort, in addition to some major decisions that need to be pinned down.
Media Library
The media library views have gotten a lot of good work recently, but there’s still a long ways to go. And it’s not just accessibility that’s needed here, but also some general usability questions for all users, as pointed out by Ryan Boren. Some work needs to go into the flow for all users; while all features need to be available via keyboard, it would be nice to explore a user flow that allows the work flow to be smooth, as well.
Tickets:
- #30512 – Improve media views accessibility
- #30599 – Media views: improve keyboard accessibility avoiding confusing tab stops
- #28820 – Focus isn’t clear when previewing an oEmbed from Add Media Panel
- #30392 – Focus moves out of insert media overlay when tabbing beyond Insert into post button
- #30386 – Keyboard user has to tab through all uploade dimages to insert an image
- #23562 – Using speech recognition software with the add media panel
- #28864 – Cannot access edit menu options with keyboard inside Image Editor
- #26550 – Some anchor links should be buttons in media microtemplates
- #25103 – Submit buttons on form fields in the Add Media Panel
Post Editing and Authoring
There are a number of outstanding issues relating to authoring and editing posts, largely relating to some confusing tab order and needed improvements in flow both for mobile and users with disabilities. The current set up provides an extremely easy tab navigation from the title to the post content fields, but accessing anything in between via keyboard can be quite confusing. See also the flow comments from Mark Jaquith.
Tickets:
- #29838 – Post editing area: keyboard accessibility, tab order, and focus
- #23760 – Cannot use spacebar to trigger OK button or links in Publish widget
- #30368 – Issue with category selection using voiceover
- #27555 – Make tag post meta box more accessible
- #30407 – Add keyboard shortcut for switching between Visual and Text editors
- #30490 – TinyMCE: switch editor tabs focus style
- #30619 – The wpView toolbar is not accessible by keyboard
- #30345 – Quick edit: form submitted when activating cancel via keyboard
- #28431 – There’s no way to close the “keyboard shortcuts” modal with the keyboard
Use of .screen-reader-text in front-end
This is a long-standing issue in handling some front-end accessibility issues. Numerous proposals have been floated, but there’s no strategic goal right now. Among the proposals are to add a theme support registry for the class .screen-reader-text, to set up core styles for the front-end that implement a .screen-reader-text class, or to simply add new information with that class and leave it to theme authors and site admins to handle the changes in front-end HTML output. This effects several other tickets. (I may not have caught all of them.)
Part of the question here is for any future needs to add contextual references to core output: at what level is it necessary for us to avoid HTML changes on the front-end?
- #29699 – add_theme_support( ‘screen-reader-text’ );
- #18650 – Accessible dropdown widgets
- #26553 – Comments popup link
Visual focus indication in Admin Menu
This ticket has gotten a lot of design attention but was not completed in time for 4.1. It needs further UI feedback.
- #28599 – Better visual focus indication in Admin Menu
Miscellaneous outstanding issues
There are a large number of HTML inconsistencies, such as missing labels, links used as buttons. Not all of them have outstanding tickets, but I’m aiming to spend some time clearing out these minor issues so that we can better focus on more complex issues. Most of these are very small issues that with simple HTML/JS/PHP changes, but might require some CSS updates. And we all know how fun it is to spend time in the WP admin stylesheet.
I know that there are some issues that don’t yet have tickets; I’ll be raising those, as well.
- #28873 – Javascript code for adding bookmarklet Press This is hard to access with keyboard only
- #30486 – Missing label associations throughout network admin
- #29715 – Not-unique accesskey values may break quick edit and bulk edit form submission
- #26562 – Remove title attributes class-wp-admin-bar.php
- #26600 – Search installed themes input has no submit button
- #29955 – Section 508 issues found on WP 4.0 admin page
- #26504 – Semantic elements for non-link links
- #30685 – Better Login Error and Message displaying
- #21221 – Image title and alt attribute content should be texturized
- #30914 – WP List Table: improve table footer tab sequence
- #26601 – Inappropriate content in heading on Themes page
- #29022 – Screen reader text and link title isn’t updated when plugin update count is updated
- #26167 – Plugin activation links need to contain plugin name and the Plugin column should be marked as row header
- #26550 – Some anchor links should be buttons in media microtemplates
- #30706 – Add aria-describedby to autofocused fields