The goal
During my 25 years working as a web accessibility specialist I noticed the biggest hurdle to create an accessible web, is the lack of knowledge.
People have a hard time finding out what is important, where to get reliable information and code patterns, what the rules are and how to test.
My goal is to work on up to date and well maintained information for WordPress, about what is needed to deliver accessible work and how to properly test for accessibility.
With clear do’s and don’ts, practical examples, and easy-to-follow documentation.
Why?
At WordCamp Europe 2024 in Torino, I conducted an analysis for the WordPress accessibility team, reviewing the current state of WordPress accessibility documentation. Most of the content is over seven years old and now outdated and too limited in scope.
At the moment the WordPress Accessibility Team doesn’t have enough time nor the resources to work on this.
With accessibility becoming increasingly important, especially as global legislation grows more stringent, it’s critical that WordPress provides up-to-date and comprehensive resources. This needs improvement.
The work
My focus will be on research, writing documentation, and creating example patterns and components. Hosted on the WP Accessibility repository, via GitHub Pages and a pattern library, as an open source project. I want to work together with accessibility experts, skilled developers, designers, content creators and theme builders.
I also plan to travel to WordCamps to join contributor days to work with the Accessibility Team, give workshops at WordCamps and local or online meetups.
My focus will be purely on documentation and education. To provide people working with WordPress with the knowledge they need.
How will this affect the accessibility of WordPress?
The current accessibility of WordPress core needs to be improved to meet international legislation.
By providing documentation, examples and components people working for and with WordPress, will have reliable accessibility resources for their work.
Better to do it right the first time round, rather than fixing issues later on.
Also this documentation can be referred to in bug reports, issues and tickets, act as an example on how to build or fix. Proper resourses will make life so much straight-forward for core developers, theme and plugin builders, designers, content creators, testers and auditors.
A place to go to with dedicated, up to date information. To learn, copy/paste from and refer to.
What do I need?
Hey I’m Dutch, so I’m direct: I need 7500 euro per month to spend serious time on this.
For this amount I can work an average of 15 hours a week on the project and additionally cover my time and expenses attending and working at WordCamps and other WordPress related events.
This gives me the time and resources to focus, research, work together, network, travel and speak. To provide everyone working with WordPress with the knowledge they need.
How can you help?
If you want to (partly) sponsor this work, please contact me by
- emailing me at rian@rianrietveld.nl,
- reaching out on the WordPress Slack, my handle is @rianrietveld,
- meeting me at WordCamp Europe in Basel.
Let’s create a web for everyone.
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