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Focus On Beaver Builder Accessibility - Is the End Product Accessible? by Claire Brotherton
Someone recently asked me about how accessible the Beaver Builder page builder is. Beaver Builder is a very popular page builder for WordPress that lets user

This was written at the end of last year. I’m glad to see the improvements BB has made with regard to accessibility. I’ve given them a lot of criticism in the past and it’s only fair to also highlight when they’ve improved.

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Twitter syndication is becoming less and less worth it.

Constantly having to reauthorize Bridgy, only to then have Twitter give me crap because “Hey, we saw a log-in from a different device!”

No you didn’t you morons, it’s me, and I shouldn’t have to keep reauthorizing just because you hate third-party clients.

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Headline: “Hedge-Funders Have Some Thoughts on What Epstein Was Doing.”

Me: “Odds are pretty good that at least ten of the hedge funders offering their thoughts were just as much involved with Epstein as the Clintons and Trump and Prince Andrew among others so they should feel free to have several seats.

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For me, public reading is the act of cataloging the things I’m reading, sometimes so I can find said things later and sometimes for the sake of those times once every year or two when I page back through posts to get a personal glimpse of what’s been going on, how I’ve changed or my thoughts have changed, ETC.

I think performance can come into play, (I’ve read x number of books or x number of words, for example), but it doesn’t have to.

Keeping track of these kinds of statistics can serve ths personal journey retracing purpose, or as documentation of competition.

I think that in order for performance to come into play, there have to be people to watch/witness the performance, and that brings up whether or not personal websites serve the same purpose as your typical social media profile.

For me, my personal website serves the purpose of a social media profile only to the extent that, if someone asks why I’m not posting on Twitter, Facebook, ETC. because they’re interested in what’s going on in my life, at which point I’ll direct them to my website.

But other than that, if people follow, that’s great, and I enjoy the bits of conversation that can happen as a result of the following. If they don’t, that’s fine too, and I’ll keep posting/logging things.

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I’d be lying if I said I hoped Lawrence Lessig wins this lawsuit.

Fact is, I hope he loses, if for no other reason than I’m sick and tired of powerful guys like this go on and on about free speech (TM), and then get all butthurt when someone exercises their right to same by saying mean things about them.

Or when they go on and on about free association, (as they necessarily do when advocating on behalf of the Firist Ammendment), only to then get all buthurt when others choose not to associate with them after they defend the indefenseable.

People like Lawrence Lessig are more than welcome to defend pedophiles, taking money from same, ETC. But those defenses aren’t free of social consequences, and that’s what they’re suffering here, social consequences.

And if you don’t like the social consequences, maybe don’t defend pedophiles or taking money from same.

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Rest in peace, power and light, @AccessibleJoe (Joseph O’Connor)

You made the accessibility community as a whole a better, stronger place, and for me at least, you were and are the patriarch of the WordPress Accessibility Team. You helped make it a family, and more importantly, you taught me more things that had nothing to do with the technical aspects of web accessibility than I can enumerate.

Thank you for being the person you were and are and always will be, and when my time comes to enter the World to Come, I hope to be able to report to you that every battle for the rights of people like your beloved daughter has been fought and won.

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Just popping my head up to offer some very rare but well-earned praise for GoDaddy.

I just had to log into their DNS manager to update a record for a client. I found that the record editing process was extremely accessible which made my job easier.

There are of course still improvements that need to be made to the interface, but I’m glad to see that some accessibility work has been done.

On a related note, WPEngine is promising a new interface with keyboard accessibility, which is also a welcome improvement.

I’m looking forward to that.

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A quick introduction to using Gutenberg by Marco zehe (Marco's Accessibility Blog)
Late in November, I published a personal opinion on the state of Gutenberg accessibility. Today, I’d like to give an introduction to Gutenberg from a screen reader user perspective.

Right about now I’m all for declaring Marco Supreme Ruler of the Universe.

I still have issues with this whole Gutenberg process, and my recent criticisms regarding leadership and project-level accessibility prioritization still hold.

But this quick guide to using Gutenberg with a screen reader gives me a place to start, and at least allows me to work with the thing, and even to think about experimenting with some things on a development version of this site.

So, thank you tons Marco, I probably owe you a keg at this point. 🙂

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I’ve tried to come to terms with AMP, but just can’t bring myself to do it.

If a client insists on it, I’ll do my best to convince them otherwise, but if they continue to insist I’ll of course implement it because pick your battles (TM).

This has turned out to be a great resource for keeping up with the flaws of AMP though.

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My thoughts on Gutenberg Accessibility by Marco Zehe @marcoinenglish
WordPress and Gutenberg project leaders: You want WordPress to be a platform for everyone? Well, I’d say it is about time to put your money where your mouth is, and start getting serious about that commitment. It is never too late to change a public stance and get positive reactions for it. The doors aren’t closed, and I, for one, would whole-heartedly welcome that change of attitude from your end and not bitch about it when it happens. Your call!

Marco’s being pretty modest in his description of his abilities and what he does for a living, and I’ll save you the time of reading a multi-page biography which would probably border on hagiography (I have a ton of personal and professional respect for Marco) by saying he knows what he’s talking about and should be listened to.

And this is probably as positive as continued critiques are going to get.

There’s so much worth quoting from this post that I had difficulty picking the best excerpt, so I’ll add my thoughts on the other options below, in a slightly different order than they appear in the original post.

… what I see here is a repetitive pattern seen in many other projects, too. Treating accessibility as a bolt-on step at the end of any given cycle never works, will never pay off, and never lead to good inclusive results.

That statement holds true no matter how many slogans or how much positivity you pile on top of it. And I keep bringing up the positivity thing because it’s particularly galling when WordPress leadership preaches inclusion, everyone, and the like, only to have the bits that are inconvenient ignored or dismissed as mere negativity when it comes down to brass tacks.

The fact that a bunch of currently fully able-bodied people have actively decided to not be inclusive from the start means that a lot of decisions requiring a certain amount of both empathy and expertise need to be made at lower levels, and pushed into the product via grass root methods, which are often long and cumbersome and only lead to slow results. These can be very tiring.

This whole situation is crap. The fact that a bunch of us essentially have to stick around because if we don’t the accessibility won’t happen and we have to fight against the laziness of leadership, (and let me be clear here, by leadership I mean the decisionmakers, which doesn’t include most of the people working on Gutenberg, even the designers and developers who carry the title of lead), is demonstration all by itself that accessibility/inclusion isn’t a priority.

I don’t know why other accessibility advocates stick around despite this, I can only speak for myself.

I stick around although with more built-in intermittent breaks out of (1) pure stubbornness and (2) the desire to ensure that people with disabilities are just as able to have an open, independent home on the web just like everyone else and (3) the self-interest I started with.

People with disabilities shouldn’t have to be stuck with Facebook or Twitter, with all their problems, because the benevolent dictator of one of the largest free software projects makes promises, implied or otherwise, about inclusion and “everyone” which he then finds inconvenient to keep.

I once kept a job for two years after the software I needed to do that job became inaccessible because I refused to accept termination and a severence package in lieu of the accessibility issues being resolved. I used that time to hack on WordPress and learn my way around it, and I have benefited greatly from that initial learning and the assistance and friendship or even family of the WordPress community.

If I could manage to keep that job until I could leave on my terms, I will figure out how to stick with WordPress either until things get better or I leave on my terms.

I’m definitely not walking away while that piece paraphrasing my original HeroPress essay is still up on WordPress.org. I still stand by a lot of what’s there, especially the bits about the community, but if I go along to get along, or don’t speak up about this stuff when I think it’s warranted, then essentially I provide an easy way for that piece to be used as promotional material or evidence of a claim that is more like an ideal to be striven for as long as the circumstances are just right.

I don’t have any intention of serving as a token.

I realize all of the above probably sounds like I’m being an arrogant jerk, although I don’t intend arrogance at all, and I hope the people who know me and who have interacted with me also realize that.

I’m thankful for the rest of the accessibility advocates in this community especially, and the rest of the accessibility team who work so hard on a daily basis and never complain when surely they could be doing other things with their free time.

And I’m thankful to the accessibility advocates outside the WordPress community who have spoken up on these issues.

Finally, I’m thankful for Marco joining the discussion.

Yes, I’m tired. But if I can manage to keep a job for two years and leave on my own terms and only on my own terms, I can stick around and help everyone who has spoken up and sacrificed their free time win this. We’ll do it eventually.