Make WordPress Accessible – Equal Access For All

Make WordPress Accessible – Equal Access For All
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Make WordPress Accessible
The
Accessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility)
Team shares their expertise to improve the accessibility of WordPress
core
Core
Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.
and resources.
WordPress targets
WCAG 2.2 at level AA
as the standard for development.
How you can help
Get involved
Review
accessibility related active tickets, tasks, and reports
See
accessibility issues for the block editor
Create a new ticket
Contribute to the new documentation
WP Accessibility Knowledge Base
This is the proposed agenda for the bi-weekly
Accessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility)
Team meeting on
Thursday, April 23, 2026 15:00 UTC
Looking for Table leads for
WordCamp
WordCamp
WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy.
Europe 2026
Contributor Day
Contributor Day
Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of
There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus.
During the last triage, Joe shared a
Google Doc
for capturing feedback and observations on how the new changes (slider, editor, and controls) are working.
WordPress Accessibility Day 2026’s call for speakers is officially open!
Updates from the working group
Documentation
General
Gutenberg
Gutenberg
The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc.
Themes
Open floor
If you want to have a topic added to the agenda, please mention it in the comments of this post.
The Accessibility Team bug scrub is every Tuesday at 16:00 UTC, held in the
#accessibility
channel on the Make WordPress
Slack
Slack
Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform
. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at
registration required
).
X-comment from
+make.wordpress.org/core
: Comment on
The Path Forward for WordPress 7.0
WordCamp Asia 2026
is coming soon! This year’s WCAsia will take place in Mumbai, India, from April 9 to 11, 2026. The
Accessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility)
Team works to make WordPress as accessible as possible for as many people as possible, and we are always looking for new contributors. We look forward to meeting many people who are interested in accessibility at
Contributor Day
Contributor Day
Contributor Day
Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of
There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus.
Schedule
Wednesday, January 28, 2026 02:30 UTC
— Registration Open and Networking Time
Wednesday, January 28, 2026 03:30 UTC
— Opening Remarks
Wednesday, January 28, 2026 04:00 UTC
— Contributing to WordPress
Wednesday, January 28, 2026 06:30 UTC
— Long Break / Networking
Wednesday, January 28, 2026 08:15 UTC
— Family Photo
Wednesday, January 28, 2026 08:30 UTC
— Contributing to WordPress / Workshop / Open-Source Library
Wednesday, January 28, 2026 11:00 UTC
— Closing Remarks
Wednesday, January 28, 2026 11:30 UTC
— Contributor Day Wrap up
Important Note
: Remote support is available during the following hours:
From
Wednesday, January 28, 2026 02:30 UTC
to
Wednesday, January 28, 2026 05:00 UTC
From
Wednesday, January 28, 2026 06:00 UTC
to
Wednesday, January 28, 2026 11:00 UTC
What Should I Prepare to Contribute?
The most important thing is your desire to make WordPress accessible. Whether your interests are in code, testing, or documentation, we will guide you to the best way to contribute. If you would like to contribute with code, we recommend setting up a local development environment in advance.
If you are joining online, please join the
#accessibility
Slack
Slack
Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform
. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at
channel and feel free to say hello to us.
Our Goals
One of the main goals of Contributor Day is to welcome contributors who are interested in accessibility and guide them on how to get involved. Below are some examples of specific goals:
Contribute to Documentation
: Learn what documentation exists and how it is managed. Read the documentation and report areas that could be improved. Write new documentation.
Contribute to Code
: Set up a development environment. Identify accessibility-related issues. Learn how to work on those issues.
Contribute to Testing
: Test accessibility-related issues. Test WordPress and identify and report accessibility problems.
About Table Leads
Experienced members will support you. Please feel free to ask any questions—about what accessibility is, how you can contribute, what is required to contribute code, or anything else.
In-person Table Lead:
Nasim Miah
Online Table Lead:
Aki Hamano
Helpful Resources
If you would like to learn about accessibility, we recommend reviewing
the WP Accessibility Knowledge Base
in advance. This document is a comprehensive accessibility guideline for WordPress and is continuously being improved. If you are interested in helping improve the documentation, please visit
the GitHub repository
Are you interested in contributing through testing or code? The Accessibility Handbook has
a helpful page
for finding accessibility-related tasks.
Another helpful resource is
the Contributor Pathway for testing accessibility.
Props to
krupajnanda
and
joedolson
for peer review of this post.
wcasia2026
These is the bi-weekly notes for the
Accessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility)
Team meeting that happens on alternate Thursday in
#accessibility.
You can read the
full transcript
here or see the
full meeting schedule
WordPress 7.0 RC2 released
Only a week to go for WCAsia2026
Working Group Updates
Docs
rianrietveld
shared the updates for docs team as mentioned below.
New and updated documentation has been published on
wpaccessibility.org
Frontend code:
Handling visual and keyboard focus
, with subpages addressing:
Tabindex and tab order
Visual focus
Trapping focus
Restoring focus
Autofocus
Focus and hover interactions
Keyboard traps
Forms:
No positive tabindex
Design and user experience:
Styling focus and hover states of interactive HTML elements
Training
Start with accessibility:
How to get training to learn web accessibility
, with subpages addressing:
Online training
Books
Online events
Knowledge resources
Education & Discussion Groups
Work is ongoing to
extend and update documentation around alternative text (alt text) for images in WordPress
The goal is to make it useful not just for content creators, but also for developers
There is an active discussion around introducing a
“Can I Use” section for
core
Core
Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.
blocks
This would highlight the
accessibility status of each
block
Block
Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience.
, helping users understand current support and limitations both.
Generic Updates
was shared by
joedolson
. He is currently working on preparing the post about accessibility changes in WordPress 7.0 release and working on identifying tickets targeted for 7.1 release.
He mentioned that most focus right now should be on testing 7.0, to ensure that any new issues or regressions are caught before the actual release.
joedolson
also mentioned that the work on the theme accessibility-ready updates has been delayed due to the complexity of last-minute changes in WordPress 7.0 release. It is expected to resume post-release.
The upcoming bi-weekly meeting is
cancelled in favour of
WordCamp
WordCamp
WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy.
Asia
activities.
Our
next meeting will take place directly on 23rd April
on a regular time 15:00 UTC
meeting-notes
This update informs you about:
new and updated documentation on wpaccessibility.org;
work in progress.
New and updated documentation on wpaccessibility.org
Quick wins
to improve the
Accessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility)
of your website.
The
Reading guide
, vistors now can find content by role or expertise instead of by topic only.
Disclaimer
, in short: This documentation is intended to help the WordPress community understand and implement accessible practices. It is not a replacement for the official Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.
Focus management
Frontend code:
Handling visual and keyboard focus
, with subpages addressing:
Tabindex and tab order
Visual focus
Trapping focus
Restore focus
Autofocus
On input, focus and hover
Keyboard trap
Webforms:
No positive tabindex
Design and user experience:
Styling focus and hover states of interactive HTML elements
Training
Start with accessibility:
How to get training to learn web accessibility
, with subpages addressing:
Online training
. An overview of training, meetups and conferences to learn accessibility.
Books
. Recommended books about web accessibility.
Online events
. An overview of training, meetups and conferences to learn accessibility.
Knowledge resources
. Knowledge resources and newsletters on web accessibility.
Education & Discussion Groups
. How to find peer support and meet people to learn accessibility.
Current handbook
We will wait with transferring the current
Accessibility Team Handbook
to
GitHub
GitHub
GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged by the repository owner.
until later, we need to explain and discuss this in more detail with the
Meta
Meta
Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress.
team. Maybe
WordCamp
WordCamp
WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy.
Europe will be a good opportunity for this.
Work in progress
We are discussing if and how to set up a “Can I Use” section for
core
Core
Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.
blocks (
GitHub issue 294
). With the status per core
block
Block
Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience.
about its accessibility. All input is appreciated.
Documentation we are working on to improve at the moment:
Alt text for images in the content and in theme development.
Headings in the content and in theme development.
Introduction to
WCAG
WCAG
WCAG is an acronym for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. These guidelines are helping make sure the internet is accessible to all people no matter how they would need to access the internet (screen-reader, keyboard only, etc)
Accessibility for your business.
Legislation.
All
feedback
on the documentation is very much welcome.
wp-a11y-docs
This is the proposed agenda for the bi-weekly
Accessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility)
Team meeting on
Thursday, March 27, 2026 at 12:30 AM GMT+5:30
Your Browser Becomes Your WordPress
WordPress Release Update
Who is attending WordCampAsia?
Updates from the working group
Documentation
General
Gutenberg
Gutenberg
The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc.
Themes
Open floor
If you want to have a topic added to the agenda, please mention it in the comments of this post.
The Accessibility Team bug scrub is every Tuesday at 16:00 UTC, held in the
#accessibility
channel on the Make WordPress
Slack
Slack
Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform
. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at
registration required
).
agenda
On
Thursday, March 12, 2026 at 08:30 PM GMT+5:30
, a team meeting started in
#accessibility
kicked of by
Krupa Nanda
. You can read the
full transcript
or see the
meeting agenda
Change in meeting time for next two meetings
There is the change in meeting time from next meetings till the release is over. (~ for 2-3 meetings). The new time is
19:00 UTC
Table Leads for
WordCamp
WordCamp
WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy.
Asia 2026
The
Accessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility)
Team is looking for
Table Leads
for WordCamp Asia 2026
Contributor Day
Contributor Day
Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of
There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus.
Contributor Day will take place on
April 9, 2026
, at the Jio World Convention Centre.
We may consider having two table leads: one onsite and one supporting remotely.
If you’re attending and willing to take on this role, please fill out the application form shared on
slack
Slack
Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform
. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at
channel. Feel free to
ping
Ping
The act of sending a very small amount of data to an end point. Ping is used in computer science to illicit a response from a target server to test it’s connection. Ping is also a term used by Slack users to @ someone or send them a direct message (DM). Users might say something along the lines of “Ping me when the meeting starts.”
@krupajnanda
for more details.
Remote support is also welcome.
It’s time to test real-time collaboration!
With WordPress 7.0, real-time collaboration—the centerpiece of
Gutenberg
Gutenberg
The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc.
Phase 3—lands in
Core
Core
Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.
. This is the first iteration, and there’s much more to come. But you can test it now!
Call For Feedback
: Increasing Value of Release Party Testing Phase
Working Group Updates
Documentation
added
Quick Wins
and a
Reading Guide
(content by role/expertise), included a disclaimer that docs support the WordPress community but don’t replace
WCAG
WCAG
WCAG is an acronym for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. These guidelines are helping make sure the internet is accessible to all people no matter how they would need to access the internet (screen-reader, keyboard only, etc)
.. Currently work is done on documentation on focus management, alt text, WCAG intro, business accessibility, and legislation.
General Updates
joedolson
shared many updates, with a few items still being worked on.
Only one accessibility ticket remains open for the WordPress 7.0 milestone (likely won’t make it), 32 tickets were closed for 7.0, focus will shift to accessibility goals for 7.1 after RC1, and
RC
Release Candidate
A beta version of software with the potential to be a final product, which is ready to release unless significant bugs emerge.
is the key time to review and fix accessibility issues in new features before final release.
Gutenberg
Real-time collaboration needs accessibility testing (especially with screen readers); contributors should test RTC with multiple users editing simultaneously, coordinate testing with
joedolson
, and also review visual
revisions
Revisions
The WordPress revisions system stores a record of each saved draft or published update. The revision system allows you to see what changes were made in each revision by dragging a slider (or using the Next/Previous buttons). The display indicates what has changed in each revision.
though they are less urgent.
Themes
So far no updates here.
The following two meetings will be scheduled at
19:00 UTC
due to a timing conflict with the
WordPress 7.0 release
. After the release, we will return to our regular meeting time of
15:00 UTC
. This change is temporary.
meeting-notes
This is the proposed agenda for the bi-weekly
Accessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility)
Team meeting on
Thursday, March 12, 2026 at 08:30 PM GMT+5:30
Change in meeting time for next two meetings
WordCampAsia 2026 : Looking for table lead
It’s time to test real-time collaboration!
Call For Feedback: Increasing Value of Release Party Testing Phase
Updates from the working group
Documentation
General
Gutenberg
Gutenberg
The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc.
Themes
Open floor
If you want to have a topic added to the agenda, please mention it in the comments of this post.
The Accessibility Team bug scrub is every Tuesday at 16:00 UTC, held in the
#accessibility
channel on the Make WordPress
Slack
Slack
Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform
. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at
registration required
).
agenda
On
Thursday, February 26, 2026 at 08:30 PM GMT+5:30
, a team meeting started in
#accessibility
kicked of by
Krupa Nanda
. You can read the
full transcript
or see the
meeting agenda
Table Leads for
WordCamp
WordCamp
WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy.
Asia 2026
The
Accessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility)
Team is looking for
Table Leads
for WordCamp Asia 2026
Contributor Day
Contributor Day
Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of
There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus.
Contributor Day will take place on
April 9, 2026
, at the Jio World Convention Centre.
We may consider having two table leads: one onsite and one supporting remotely.
If you’re attending and willing to take on this role, please fill out the application form shared on
slack
Slack
Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform
. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at
channel. Feel free to
ping
Ping
The act of sending a very small amount of data to an end point. Ping is used in computer science to illicit a response from a target server to test it’s connection. Ping is also a term used by Slack users to @ someone or send them a direct message (DM). Users might say something along the lines of “Ping me when the meeting starts.”
@krupajnanda
for more details.
Remote support is also welcome.
The test team has prepared the doc to help the featured covered in 7.0 release. Feel free to take the help from
Help test WordPress 7.0
post.
Working Group Updates
Documentation
The team removed most of the
Accessibility Handbook
content from the Make Accessibility site and replaced it with pointers linking to the new documentation. This change was made to avoid the need to maintain two separate sets of documentation. The remaining content focuses on information about how contributors can get involved and contribute to the Accessibility Team.
General Updates
joedolson
shared many updates, with a few items still being worked on.
Tickets that already have patches but have not yet been committed should ideally be either committed or punted within the week.
Early testing of patches is highly valuable and helps move things forward more quickly. Overall, the project is in good shape, although there are still a few tickets that need to be completed.
Gutenberg
joedolson
shared that
Gutenberg
Gutenberg
The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc.
has introduced many changes in this release, making testing during the
beta
Beta
A pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process.
phase especially important.
The top priority should be testing the output of any new blocks, as those are the most difficult to modify after release, though there are also several new interfaces to review.
Contributors are encouraged to explore the release features and test them thoroughly, including navigating without a mouse, checking control names, and enabling visible label features. General accessibility
testing
guidance is available, and since each feature may require a different approach, specific testing instructions may be provided when needed. Some features may already have their own testing instructions available.
Themes
So far no updates here.
Please note that the next meeting will take place at
15:00 UTC
. The following two meetings will be scheduled at
19:00 UTC
due to a timing conflict with the
WordPress 7.0 release
. After the release, we will return to our regular meeting time of
15:00 UTC
. This change is temporary.
meeting-notes
This update informs you about:
new content;
changes in the current team handbook;
plans for March.
New content on wpaccessibility.org
The way of navigating the content is now less depending on the main menu. For a better user experience, also for mobile views.
We added the
Reading guide
, vistors now can find content by role or expertise instead of by topic only.
Changes in the current team handbook
The
Accessibility Team Handbook
now only addresses the info about the
Accessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility)
team itself and for the accessibility documentation we now point to the
Standards and best practices
in the WP Accessibility Knowledge Base. Since redirects for popular pages are not possible, some subpages will be left in place to guide users to the updated content.
Plans for March ’26
Finish the documentation about Focus management, in the sections Frontend code and Web forms.
Start with updating and extending the documentation for the section Content and images.
Transfer the Accessibility team handbook to
GitHub
GitHub
GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged by the repository owner.
wp-a11y-docs
Site resources
Welcome!
This is the official blog for the WordPress open source project's web accessibility group. Feel free to join in as we discuss accessibility issues within WordPress core and how best to resolve them.
If you want to post a comment, log in using your WordPress.org username and password. We would love to hear your views.
Current Release Tracking
Resources
Accessibility Handbook
Accessibility Knowledge Base
Theme Accessibility
Plugin Accessibility
WordPress Accessibility Day
Accessibility talks on WordPress.tv
Accessibility support forum
The
Accessibility forum at WordPress.org support
is to provide support for end user & developer questions related to WordPress & accessibility.
Team Meetings
WordPress is using Slack
to host meetings. All meetings occur in the Slack #accessibility channel.
Bi-Weekly Team Meetings
Our regular meetings happen bi-weekly on Thursdays at 15:00 UTC.
Accessibility Bug-Scrubs
Trac ticket
and
Github issue
discussions happen every Tuesday at 16:00 UTC.
Email Updates
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