[wp-docs] Accessibility page on Codex (James GIll)

Tue Nov 20 21:13:39 UTC 2012

I agree. James, would you be willing to talk to some of the
accessibility team members? You volunteered and Mel and I went
overboard helping. :D

It's good to know that at least one country puts the onus on site
owners. I still believe that WordPress needs to step up more and
making link titles and image alternative descriptions required (in
addition to the title for the database) is a simple and easy to
implement step. Hard to do that when people click and drag stuff into
WordPress, but it is a start for those who use it better.

Glenda Watson Hyatt has offered her services and advice to WordPress
in the past on accessibility, and I've recommended hiring her as a
consultant for years. Here are some of her recent posts on the
subject.

http://blogaccessibility.com/take-the-accessibility-challenge-make-your-next-blog-post-accessible-in-75-seconds/
http://www.21times.org/archives/glenda-watson-hyatts-top-7-countdown-of-common-accessibility-struggles/

She wrote a great post about WordPress accessibility - several of
them, but I can't find them and I have to race out the door to teach.
ARGH.

Anyway, thanks, James, for letting us run off on our favorite subject.
Mel and I have very vested interests in accessibility issues - as you
can tell. :D

Lorelle

On Tue, Nov 20, 2012 at 12:12 PM, esmi at quirm dot net <esmi at quirm.net> wrote:
> on 20/11/2012 19:17 Lorelle on WordPress said the following:
>
>> On the issue of WordPress "preventing building accessible sites,"
>> that's not true.
>
>
> Out of the box, WP + Twenty Eleven is pretty accessible. It's not perfect
> but it's a lot better than many CMS out there. There's also a very strong
> commitment to make WordPress core even more accessible - which is a far cry
> from some of the stories I've heard about Drupal or Joomla. Without the
> current accessibility level and the desire to improve it, I doubt I'd be
> hanging around here. :-)
>
>
>> Accessibility is mostly reliant upon Themes and
>> Plugins.
>
>
> To some extent, yes but there is room for improvement in core. And this is
> being worked on but, like all improvements, good stable changes tend to
> happen slowly.
>
>
>> That must be clear, however, WordPress does not enforce
>> compliance with images and links which is part of the requirements for
>> accessibility and part of the WordPress core programming.
>
>
> The problem here (as I see it) is that WordPress is a tool that has to be
> everything to everyone. And like any tool, it helps if you understand how to
> use it properly. Make it too restrictive in an effort to enforce
> accessibility and you will cause problems - not least for those who do
> actually know what they're doing. So you have to strike a reasonable balance
> and try to educate those using the "tool" badly.
>
> Site owners must take responsibility for their own sites. WordPress core,
> themes & plugins can only do so much. Everything else is down to site
> authors. They have to create their content intelligently to complete the
> accessibility picture and we can help them to some extent. That's why I
> re-wrote <http://codex.wordpress.org/Accessibility> to try and focus on
> practical steps that non-technical site authors can take.
>
> It's also worth bearing in mind that disabled users also have a
> responsibility to learn how to use their AT software effectively (a factor
> often gets overlooked).
>
> <snip>
>
>> An accessibility expert told me one time that it would be interesting
>> to see a WordPress specific lawsuit over this. Would the site owner be
>> completely liable or would some of the onus be on WordPress and/or the
>> web developer(s), Theme designers, and Plugin authors for
>> non-compliance. I think that's a valid question that needs answering
>> to help protect all parties involved. Hold harmless can only go so
>> far, and we all know that ignorance of the laws means squat.
>
>
> Under UK law, the responsibility lies fairly and squarely with the site
> owner. It is up to him/her to choose the right CMS and there is a fair
> amount of documentation available to help would-be site owners in this
> regard. We even have a published British Standard:
>
> <http://shop.bsigroup.com/en/Browse-by-Subject/Accessibility/>
>
> I'm pretty sure that other European countries have similar laws & resources.
> Germany & the Netherlands spring to mind. The Philippines are also being
> very pro-active in promoting accessibility across the ICT board.
>
>
>> I hope I am not muddying the waters. I just want to make sure that
>> compliance with international law is considered in the article so we
>> can best serve our audience. This is no longer an ethical decision but
>> a legal one. Having followed the lawsuits of these cases over the
>> years closely, there is a lot of legal involved, but it boils down to
>> simple things that could have been done right in the first place, if
>> people understood these are not ethical or "right" choices but the
>> law.
>
>
> That's definitely The Stick but there's also The Carrot. Accessible sites
> very often out-perform their less accessible counterparts - both in terms of
> SEO and user popularity. Tesco.com (one of the world's largest grocery
> retailers) take web accessibility really, *really*, seriously. Ever since
> the response to their first "accessible" site exceeded their wildest
> expectations. Legal & General (a big UK insurance firm) reported a 90%
> increase in online sales 12 months after launching their first accessible
> site.
>
> These are not fluffy social organisations. They're hard-nosed corporations
> with their eyes firmly fixed on the bottom line. They both made their
> initial site changes based on the fear of legal action but became very
> public advocates of accessibility once they realised its benefits.
>
> I think that's the line that we need to promote to site owners.
>
> In terms of supporting disabled owners of WordPress, I agree that we've not
> really got much in the way of specific Codex documentation or pages in
> <http://make.wordpress.org/support/user-manual/> to support them. And that's
> something that should really be rectified. Perhaps I could ask some of the
> AT users on contributors to <http://make.wordpress.org/accessibility/> to
> help with this? A couple of them are pretty experienced.
>
> Mel
>
> --
> http://quirm.net
> http://blackwidows.co.uk
> _______________________________________________
> wp-docs mailing list
> wp-docs at lists.automattic.com
> http://lists.automattic.com/mailman/listinfo/wp-docs