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Hidde de Vries edited this page Sep 8, 2019 · 7 revisions

I talked to people from various CMSes about how accessibility works in their organisation and what kind of resources/guidance could help them push accessibility forward.

WordPress

Gutenberg

General

Backlash

“I can't stop thinking about the fact that @Wordpress (which “powers 31% of the internet”), is about to ship a massive overhaul of their interface without making sure that it's accessible. Why was a11y not a blocker for every new feature, so nothing inaccessible was ever allowed? How dare they ship a new WordPress that's not fully accessible in every way? Shame on @automattic. Shame on @photomatt. 31% of the web cannot suddenly be made inaccessible. I hope someone is preparing a lawsuit, because in the U.S, this is illegal. a11y problems are a blocker. Just think of the millions of people who's job it is to add content to a WordPress website who will be unable to do their job once this update ships. What will happen to them? Will they be fired? How dare @WordPress value their developer's convenience above real people's jobs.” — Jen Simmons

”Hey #WordPress.

Our accessibility lead @RianRietveld is stepping down because she’s hit wall after wall trying to make WP accessible. This is a HUGE red flag. A11y is not a priority with leadership. Their decisions affect our core values.

What are we gonna do about it?” — Rachel Cherry

After several years of working on WordPress and accessibility and being part of the accessibility team, I have taken the very difficult decision to leave the WordPress accessibility team. I owe it to the team to explain why I have made this decision and how I hope things can improve for the future.

NC State university cites their commitment to WCAG 2.0 as a reason to recommend disabling Gutenberg and using Classic editor instead: WordPress 5.0, Gutenberg, and Accessibility – Design & Web Services

Issues

Great improvements

Good news

In fact, Gutenberg incorporates some very useful accessibility tools that can aid users in avoiding some accessibility pitfalls, such as poor contrast and improper heading structures. Gutenberg doesn’t prevent these issues; but it will help authors avoid them. — Joe Dolson in Some Gutenberg Accessibility Clarifications

Gutenberg brings in a heavy reliance on JavaScript for custom block development. To a JavaScript developer like myself, this is a dream scenario. What’s even better is that structure of a custom block is reminiscent of modern frameworks, which make it instantly recognisable and above all, attractive.

With a solid Webpack (or alternative) setup, we can be putting together custom blocks with ES6 and JSX. This is a world away from wrestling the jQuery-ridden spaghetti jungle of old and it’s a setup that’s making me want to come back to the WordPress community with arms-wide-open to give it a big hug. Gutenburg is more than a new editor because of this. In my opinion, it’s a movement. — Andy Bell in Gutenberg: A JavaScript developer’s perspective - Andy Bell - Medium

Drupal

Mike Gifford in WAI-ig mailing list:

We wanted to see that a person with a disability can install, develop, administer, edit, publish and view their site. In Drupal 8 we’ve improved upon the default accessibility in Drupal 7. Jumping to HTML5 & adding WAI-ARIA has helped a great deal, as most admin interfaces are considerably more complex than the static pages. Most other CMS’s haven’t really even thought about the accessibility of their admin tools.

Mike Gifford comment

Without WCAG 2.0 AA conformance, we won't release a stable version of Layout Builder.

Joomla

From their accessibility statement:

Joomla! should be an accessible tool and provide a solid out of the box base for building accessible websites.

Since the birth of Joomla, we have made efforts to make our software meet accessibility requirements. With Joomla! 4.0, our next milestone, we are determined to push further down the road to accessibility. With this in mind, we will strive to ensure full accessibility of all modern dynamic user interface elements. We will, first and foremost, ensure full accessibility of Joomla’s backend so that those with disabilities can use Joomla to create, administer and maintain sites in barrier-free

Umbraco

Typo3

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