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Re: Accessible WordPress Theme

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From: Date: Jan 5, 2022 8:19AM

Hi Austin,

Amanda's remarks are very important, but I would back to your original
question:

I have an accessible theme: Manduca
<https://wordpress.org/themes/manduca/>. This was also approved by
WordPress Accessibility Team (all accessible-ready themes need to be
reviewed by them.)

You can create a beautiful design with a child theme.

It's important to mention that my goal is not only to conform with
WCAG's success criterias, but add even more  features built in. For
example focus-snake,  absolutely valid HTML markup, multi-level
navigation menu easily usable with many screen readers (this is  not an
easy challenge), wide-scale reading options, HTML sitemap, accessible
tab and hide-show modul.

I started to develop this theme because my wife is blind, so
accessibility is essential for her. I'm  developing Manduca for 7 years
now and I've bult more than 30 accessible websites with it.

Zsolt Edelényi

2022. 01. 05. 7:26 keltezéssel, Amanda Rush írta:
> 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
>
>
>