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Re: Accessible WordPress Theme

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From: Amanda Rush
Date: Jan 4, 2022 11:26PM

Hi Austin,

The best place to look for accessible WordPress themes is the WordPress
theme repository under the "Accessible Ready" tag. This is because these
themes are vetted to ensure that any claim of accessibility are accurate.
Note that none of them will claim that they are WCAG compliant as the theme
guidelines prohibit claims that any given theme can make a site compliant
with any
Legal framework or legislation.

While there may be third-party themes that are actually accessible, any
theme author can make any claim. There's also a lot of ignorance in the
third-party WordPress theme design/development space, which creates a
situation where theme authors really do intend to release an accessible
product but end up releasing an inaccessible one.

Finally, the theme is only part of the site's accessibility. The other parts
have to do with the content itself, and then what happens when plugins get
installed as they almost always do. The WordPress accessibility team does
not vet plugins, there are no plugin guidelines that address accessibility,
and consequently there are a ton of plugins even in the repository that can
introduce some significant accessibility issues to a site, and counting on
developers to fix the issues they introduce is kind of like playing darts in
the dark.

I don't know what kind of site you're building, so it would be difficult to
try to make recommendations that wouldn't create too many issues, (this also
applies to blocks and block collections if you're going that route), but if
you have further questions this list will probably take them as long as
they're related to accessibility.

Amanda