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Re: WordPress, Gutenberg, and Accessibility

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From: Graham Armfield
Date: Oct 10, 2018 9:00AM

As a one-time active (but not so much recently) menber of the WordPress
Accessibility Team, I'd like to comment. What follows is my own view.

The new Gutenberg editor has been in development for approx 18 months, and
it has always been billed as the new editor to replace the existing TinyMCE
editor. From the start it was obvious that the design and build of
Gutenberg had proceeded without any real though being given to
accessibility, and early versions were shockingly bad for screen reader and
sighted keyboard users. (It still is according to some).

There is a lot more javascript based interactivity in the new block based
editor (compared to the existing editor), and not surprisingly implementing
this accessibly needs thought and a good knowledge of ARIA.

Rian has been the WordPress Accessibility Team leader for a few years now.
Her (note Srinivasu) co-ordinating skills and patience were deep and worthy
of some admiration. She has brought in many AT users to help test
Gutenberg, and has made herself available to WP core developers as required.

Gutenberg is different from previous parts of the WP admin in that it is
built using React components. This places a new barrier on contributing to
the development, since up until now it's been PHP with a bit of javascript.
A steep learning curve for many - including myself and others on the team.

Because of this, the Accessibility Team have been largely confined to doing
testing and raising issues on the Gutenberg Github repo. We have trusted
that some react-savvy devs would come along and address the accessibility
issues. This has not happened, with the result that many accessibility
issues are still outstanding some 18 months after having been raised. Some
members of the very small team (all volunteers) have done amazing things to
cajole devs into getting things done. Some issues have been addressed, only
for some of them to regress in subsequent releases of the new editor.

Now, there is pressure from the top (Matt Mullenweg) to get Gutenberg out
there ASAP in WP Version 5.0 - in time for WordCamp US in early December
2018. He can then declare it a success. And of course the growing backlog
of accessibility issues - some of which are badged as 'must haves' - are a
bit of a fly in the ointment.

There has always been a lot of politics around Gutenberg within the WP
community, and I don't know what's been going on recently, but I'm guessing
that there has been some considerable pressure on Rian and the
accessibility team.

Rian has shown incredible resilience and in some ways I think it's a
surprise that her move didn't happen before now. I have not really
contributed to the Accessibility Team much recently, as it seems to me that
trying to push accessibility further within WordPress has become like
flogging a dead horse. I feel burned out with WordPress accessibility and
have done for a while.

The whole Gutenberg thing has been a case study in how not to do a big
project and incorporate accessibility. The negative reviews for the
Gutenberg plugin have shown that many people do not like the new editor
much at all - and not just from an accessibility perspective. There are
some reviews that indicate that the block orientated construction just does
not fit in with how some people think and operate. And of course no-one
likes change - think recent changes to Gmail.

But the powers that be within WP are not interested in opinions like this,
they arrogantly explain that people just need to spend some more time with
it to understand it better.

If you don't like Gutenberg, there is the Classic Editor plugin which keeps
things as they are now. But for how long? - that's anyone's guess.

Regards
Graham Armfield

coolfields.co.uk <http://www.coolfields.co.uk/>;
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T: 01483 856613
@coolfields <https://twitter.com/coolfields>