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Underlines Are Beautiful by Adrian Roselli (Adrian Roselli)
Underlines, the standard, built-in signifier of hyperlinks, the core feature of the web, are beautiful. This is objectively true. They are aesthetically one of the most delightful visual design elements ever created. They represent the ideal of a democratized information system. They are a frail monument to the worldwide reach…

This is probably the most poetic take on link underlines I’ve ever read.

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Dear M-Enabling Summit: seriously, why do accessibility pros have to keep passive-aggressively adding alt text to your images for you? It’s not like this is new or anything. This is, after all, 2019 and not 1995. It’s not even new by Twitter standards, and there are a metric ton of guides out there, some of them even written by accessibility pros, to show you how to use the feature. How is this not in the instructions you provide to your social media manager, assuming you have one? If you don’t, not adding it is even worse. If you can’t manage to do something as simple as adding alt text to your images, why on earth should anyone trust you to create a conference that provides valuable, accurate accessibility information?

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The practical value of semantic HTML by Bruce Lawson
It has come to my attention that many in the web standards gang are feeling grumpy about some Full Stack Developers’ lack of deep knowledge about HTML.

It’s easy to get cranky when semantic HTML is ignored by developers, and that’s usually my cue to quit for the day if possible. This is probably the funniest take I’ve read on the subject of HTML, and I kind of want to steal and modify slightly that footer text and use it on my personal site. This post is also written in a way that allows you to steal the points and add them to your notebook if you’re into that sort of thing.

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Definitely some very useful information for developers. This stuff is core knowledge that needs to be grasped by developers before getting to the point of using tools or trying to test with assistive technology. I think it’s also useful information for testers as well as assistive technology users, if for no other reason than we are often tasked with doing advocacy work, and it’s to our advantage to try to make sure that the information we’re passing on is accurate so that accessibility problems can be fixed, and not just temporarily. Well, that’s the hope, anyway.

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Democratize Publishing, Revisited by Matt
For many years, my definition of “Democratize Publishing” has been simply to help make the web a more open place. That foundation begins with the software itself, as outlined by the Four Freedoms: ... In 2018, the mission of “Democratize Publishing” to me means that people of all backgrounds, interests, and abilities should be able to access Free-as-in-speech software that empowers them to express themselves on the open web and to own their content.

Matt Mullenweg has taken the time to introspect and revisit his working definition of democratizing publishing to specifically include people of all backgrounds, interests, and abilities, and I think this is worthy of note. Not only that, I think it’s a significant step that earns him a not insignificant amount of credit. It’s a necessary step that helps lay the foundation for a more accessible WordPress, a more accessible editor for WordPress, and a more accessible web going forward. Granted, words are not action. But this, coupled with Matt’s pledge to fund the remainder of the WPCampus crowdfunding effort for a full accessibility audit of Gutenberg, by way of Automattic, (provided that pledge is fulfilled), gives me reason to be cautiously optimistic regarding Matt’s participation in the effort to make WordPress and its new editor accessible to everyone. So, thank you Matt for your demonstrated willingness to revisit the core idea behind WordPress and as a result of that thought process to make a necessary course correction. It hasn’t gone unnoticed.

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Tech Ethics New Year’s Resolution: Don’t Build Software You Will Regret by Jennifer Riggins
we should be working not just to pay the bills, but to make sure we don’t create software that we will one day regret.

In the web accessibility space, we talk a lot about how everyone has a role to play when it comes to accessibility. We’ve been talking about this for a very long time, and I’m glad to see the idea that when it comes to cross-disciplinary things like ethics, it’s not just one person’s responsibility. Accessibility, at its core, is an ethics issue, and I think that, just as accessibility as a part needs a good business case to support it, tech ethics as a whole will need that too. Right now we’re still in the beginning stages of considering tech ethics as a whole, so we’re not to the part yet where the business case for it, or even the general idea of a business case, is being considered. But I suspect we’ll get there soon enough.

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I have come to the conclusion that Matt is not going to take accessibility seriously until it affects him personally, and this is incredibly sad. Accessibility should not be the domain of those who are part of the disabled list, or those whose loved ones are part of it.

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Maybe privacy and accessibility work would be valued by employers in the WordPress space if @photomatt would do his Goddamn job and advocate for them. Walking is very painful now but I have zero problem inching across that convention center tomorrow to say that to his face. #WCUS

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I will respond to Matt’s call to learn blocks deeply when Mat learns accessibility deeply. Accessibility is not a nice-to-have, or an afterthought, or a feature, and I will not promote a thing I know full well not everyone can use, no matter how great the UX is for some. #WCUS

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You cannot release a product with significant #a11y issues and call it a quality product. You cannot ignore a11y because it gets in your way and call yourself an advocate. @photomatt can continue to play this wrong all he likes, but that still doesn’t make it jazz.

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Following is a transcription of what are apparently official comments from Yoast regarding the slated WordPress 5.0 release on Thursday. I’m providing this transcription for those who are using Twitter clients which do not support alternative text, (essentially the blindness-specific Twitter client), as well as for those on Facebook, Micro.blog and Mastodon. The quote reads:

We vehemently disagree with the decision to release WordPress 5.0 on December 6th, and think it’s irresponsible and disrespectful towards the community. However, we’re now going to try and support the community as well as possible and we hope to show everyone that Gutenberg is indeed a huge step forward.

Yoast is one of the largest plugin developers in the WordPress space, and they’ve made no bones about their support for accessibility. This tweet, for example, carries alternative text, and Yoast has made it a point to ensure that the user interfaces for their Search Engine Optimization plugin are as accessible as possible given the current WordPress interface. Joost’s comment is probably as professional as it’s going to get on this score, and know, I’m not counting the “everything-is-awesome” type comments that will inevitably be shared by Matt from Gutenberg’s cheering section in the score. There’s been a lot of chaos around Gutenberg and accessibility, and it’s heartening to know that so many in the WordPress space, including some rather large plugin and theme shops, are fighting alongside traditional accessibility advocates. All of you have my sincerest thanks.

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Playboy.com Sued by Man Alleging Website Not Accessible to the Blind
Playboy.com sued by man claiming website is not accessible to visually impaired.

I’m trying to decide if TMZ counts as accessibility hitting the mainstream or not. Also, someone should let them know that, (while Playboy Magazine has been available as part of the National Library Service for the Blind and Visually Handicapped for decades), in both braille and audio formats, blind people do not read Playboy for the articles. Some blind people are avid consumers of adult entertainment just as some sighted people are. Also, dear Playboy, if Pornhub can figure out how to make their entire site accessible while preserving its nature and content, you can too.

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I’m glad to see that WCAG 2.1 is being adopted so quickly. It was released on June 5, 2018, WCAG 2.0 took a while to be adopted as the standard. 2.1 does a lot to address the needs of not only people with disabilities, but also people who are older, (sorry screen reader users, it’s not just about us and it never has been), and I’m pleased to see that we didn’t have to wait two years to see it adopted. I’m also glad the National Federation of the Blind resorted to structured negotiation and not a lawsuit, and would like to see more campaigning in the organization’s ranks for this approach.

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I’m really, really glad to see that Deque Systems is participating in/holding a hackathon at this year’s WordCamp US contributor day along with the Accessibility Team and those on the core team who are familiar with WordPress’s testing environment, in order to integrate aXe-Core into our core. Can we call this inception yet? I use Tenon, (a competing tool), and of course I’m a Tenon fan, but I also really like aXe-core. I just find it harder to use as a screen reader user trying to fight with Firefox’s developer tools, and Chrome’s developer tools are less accessible than Firefox’s. I’m still working out some last minute details to hopefully make it to WCUS this year so I can participate. I don’t know much about WordPress’s tests but would love to help in person any way I can. Plus, it’s WordCamp. This is an incredibly positive step forward for both WordPress as well as Gutenberg, and nothing makes me happier than to see it. This is the starting point on the road to making Gutenberg one of the most awesome things on the planet in my opinion: a block editor and eventually a complete site editor with drag-and-drop capabilities that everyone can use.

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Dear #WordPress leadership: Get your shit together because this is one of a handfull of people who are actually #a11y experts who are also skilled React devs and your squandering WordPress’s hard-won rep on a11y for an arbitrary deadline is a damn shame.

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Dear WordPress. I get it. Everybody’s tired of hearing about Gutenberg, and it sucks when you’ve worked so hard on something, only to have a ton of people harshly criticize it. I get it. For Matt and the Gutenberg team, Gutenberg is your baby, and right now it seems like all of us are calling your baby ugly, dismissing all the hard work you’ve put in. Personally, I would love nothing better than to say only positive things about Gutenberg, and to talk about how much better it is than Squarespace’s or Wix’s editor, just to name a few. I would love to not participate in what’s being dismissed as WordPress drama because I, like you, hate drama. Unfortunately I do not have that privilege. I do not have the privilege of simply ignoring Gutenberg’s accessibility problems, because when it becomes the default editor those accessibility problems will directly effect my livelihood. Unless the Classic Editor plugin is per-user and per-post/post type, and unless it seemlessly converts back and forth between Gutenberg blocks and current content, it’s not even close to a workable solution. And that’s not even addressing the fact that, essentially, people with disabilities are being forced to wait on the sidelines again because a break-neck development pace and reliance on volunteers and having a shiny new thing to show off at WordCamp US were more important than whether or not WordPress demonstrated true leadership and did something truly innovative by releasing the first and only block editor that everyone can use no matter their physical ability or technical expertise. OK, so you’ve added some keyboard shortcuts and you do some really awesome things to ensure that what you deliver is an accessibility improvement upon what’s come before in this space. That’s great, but it’s not a first. Wix already does this and has done so for about a year. I mean, I can’t use their editor anymore since they just couldn’t handle attributing WordPress for that awesome update they had for a minute, but hey, they added some keyboard shortcuts and any new site starts with an accessible base and they did it all by themselves so that’s an improvement. I suppose when you go from zero accessibility to partial accessibility you have no choice but to call that an improvement, but that’s not what WordPress is doing. WordPress is improving accessibility on the front end and people with disabilities are picking up the tab. Instead of doing something truly amazing and wonderful and being the first to create a block editor that has complete drag-and-drop capabilities plus the ability for anyone who doesn’t use a mouse or who uses some kind of assistive technology to have complete control over what they create, WordPress is merely copying its competitors when it comes to releasing something that’s inaccessible and then promising to fix it later. Geocities promised to make their page builder accessible. It never happened. Google, same thing. Squarespace, they’re still making us vote on it I think, but I suppose they should maybe get points for at least being honest about the fact they really don’t give a damn. Wix resisted for years and finally started to get around to it, but they made all kinds of promises too and it’s a year later and we’re still waiting for an editor we can use. The list goes on and on and on. Anybody who’s been on the web longer than two seconds knows this song because it’s been played so often. Forgive me if I don’t exactly take promises to fix Gutenberg’s accessibility problems as anything other than promises in the dark. So yeah WordPress, I know WordPress drama sucks. I’d love to return you to your regularly scheduled program. But the WordPress I adopted as my home and as my family is better than Wix or Squarespace or Google or Geocities and I believe that it is still capable of doing great things that will shake the foundations of the web, and passing that up for the sake of speed development and a new shiny is missing an opportunity that you can never take advantage of again.