Accessibility of Select2
WooCommerce makes use of Select2, and has forked Select2 to create a more accessible version. Select2 has not been updated since the beginning of the year, and none of the accessibility pull requests made by @afercia had been incorporated into the repository. Because of this, WooCommerce elected to fork the project so that they could make better progress. The new fork lives at WooCommerce/SelectWoo.
Select2 was of interest to the accessibility team a couple of years ago as a possible solution to some significant performance problems relating to multisite networks and sites with many users. However, the project had a lot of accessibility issues that made it non-viable for core usage.
@claudiulodro attended our meeting as a representative from WooCommerce. He’s been working on integrating accessibility in SelectWoo. He will set up a test page with sample usages of SelectWoo and prepare a list of known issues that he would like assistance with so that the accessibility team can effectively provide feedback. Feedback should be provided via comments on the Accessibility review thread, as GitHub doesn’t allow people to raise issues on a fork.
@claudiulodro will make a post about SelectWoo on the WooCommerce blog later this week.
If we determine that SelectWoo provides a viable mechanism to address issues in WordPress core, we will comment to that effect on pertinent tickets within Trac.
Accessibility Handbook and Documentation
@samikeijonen gave a report on the meeting to discuss accessibility documentation on WordPress.org and in the accessibility team handbook. See the WordPress Accessibility documentation meeting notes for details.
The documentation subgroup requested a native English speaker to review documents as they are completed, as the majority of the team are non-native speakers but writing in English. @joedolson agreed to do that.
Accessibility documentation that exists as specific guidelines for developers, such as the theme accessibility review documents, needs to stay where it is. In order to avoid duplication, the team handbook will link across to those documents when that content serves the purpose needed effectively.
Open Floor
@afercia encouraged anybody who’ll be in Europe in November to propose to talk at WordCamp Milano (Novermber 18-19).