{"id":15125,"date":"2021-02-28T20:50:07","date_gmt":"2021-02-28T20:50:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/make.wordpress.org\/accessibility\/?p=15125"},"modified":"2021-03-11T19:57:44","modified_gmt":"2021-03-11T19:57:44","slug":"accessibility-teams-goals-for-wordpress-5-8-and-beyond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/make.wordpress.org\/accessibility\/2021\/02\/28\/accessibility-teams-goals-for-wordpress-5-8-and-beyond\/","title":{"rendered":"Accessibility Team\u2019s goals for WordPress 5.8 and beyond"},"content":{"rendered":"

After the first Release CandidateRelease Candidate<\/span> A beta version of software with the potential to be a final product, which is ready to release unless significant bugs emerge.<\/span><\/span><\/span> of WordPress 5.7 was shipped on February 23, the AccessibilityAccessibility<\/span> 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 \u201cdirect access\u201d (i.e. unassisted) and \u201cindirect access\u201d meaning compatibility with a person\u2019s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Accessibility)<\/span><\/span><\/span> Team is looking into setting goals for the next release.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 5.8 development cycle is yet to be defined: according to the original plan, WordPress 5.8 potential release date would be June 8, 2021, but a discussion about having four major releases in 2021 is ongoing and the release date is yet to be confirmed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nevertheless, the Accessibility Team wants to be ready when the release cycle will be announced, so this is a good time to start to collect ideas on possible team\u2019s goals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As such, we invite you to leave a comment below and propose which accessibility improvements you\u2019d like to see shipped with WordPress 5.8. The discussion to identify major team goals will be held during the next weekly meeting, happening on Friday, March 5, 2021 at 16:00 UTC<\/abbr><\/a> in the #accessibility<\/a>\u00a0channel in the Making WordPress\u00a0SlackSlack<\/span> Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https:\/\/slack.com\/<\/a>. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https:\/\/make.wordpress.org\/chat\/<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span>\u00a0(requires registration<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the 5.7 release cycle, the team decided to improve its workflow by creating seven working groups, focusing respectively on Design, Documentation, Media, MetaMeta<\/span> 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.<\/span><\/span><\/span>, General, GutenbergGutenberg<\/span> 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 \u2018blocks\u2019 to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc.\rhttps:\/\/wordpress.org\/gutenberg\/<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span>, and Themes. The new team structure helped in moving issues faster, so we\u2019re going to follow the same scheme also for WordPress 5.8. This means that the final choice about goals and targets will be in the hands of each working group, but you\u2019re still invited to share your ideas, take part in the discussion and suggest what to prioritize.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If a certain goal won\u2019t be selected for the 5.8 release, it can always be included in the list that will be created for the 5.9 release.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the number of releases planned for 2021 is probably going to be reduced, the release cycle may be longer and some larger projects might make it into the list of the release goals. Anyway, if you think that solving a specific issue or adding a new feature may require work that spans over multiple releases, let us know so that we can try to coordinate and help you get the job done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you have any questions, feel free to drop them in the comments below or in the\u00a0#accessibility\u00a0channel on Slack.<\/p>\n

#<\/span>5-8<\/a>, #<\/span>goals<\/a><\/p>