Accessibility Team Meeting Notes: July 02, 2026 – DocsWP

These is the bi-weekly notes for the Accessibility Team meeting that happens on alternate Thursday in #accessibility. You can read the full transcript here or see the full meeting schedule.

Announcements 📣

The team discussed accessibility concerns around using pure white text on dark backgrounds and near-black text on pure white backgrounds, which can cause visual discomfort for people with astigmatism, dyslexia, and other vision impairments.
Current research and discussions around WCAG 3 and the Accessible Perceptual Contrast Algorithm (APCA) suggest that extreme contrast may not always provide the best accessibility experience.
A proposal was made to create a Trac ticket documenting authoritative research and evidence supporting the use of off-white and off-black color combinations instead of pure white and pure black.
Team members were invited to contribute research and references to a shared document to support the proposal.
It was also noted that Gutenberg already uses an off-white color in many places, suggesting the use of pure white in the WordPress 7.0 admin color scheme may have been unintentional. A follow-up ticket will be opened to propose updating the color in a future point release.

For now we do not have much to share but will have more updates during the next meeting as @rianrietveld took some time off. And we already have monthly doc progress updates which is been shared as part of the announcement.

Work on WordPress 7.1 is progressing, with ongoing discussions around proposed admin bar design changes that may have accessibility implications.
The next few weeks will be critical as enhancements need to land before Beta 1 to be included in the release.
The team emphasized that accessibility testing continues throughout the release cycle, even after features are committed, allowing issues to be identified and addressed before the final release.

Ongoing Gutenberg work is focused on bringing the admin bar to both Gutenberg and classic admin screens for a more consistent experience.
Progress continues on the Icon, Playlist, and Tabs blocks, while work on the Table of Contents block appears to be stalled.
Accessibility reviews are still needed for lightbox captions, the client-side media experience, and the media editor modal.
Additional Gutenberg features are also under review as part of the team’s accessibility testing efforts.

The deadline for accessibility-ready theme reviews has been extended to allow more time for completing the backlog of reviews.
The team is currently working through more than 100 themes, with 79 themes still awaiting an initial review, alongside themes requiring re-tests, updates, and report reviews.
Once the backlog is cleared, the review process is expected to become more manageable by focusing primarily on new theme submissions.
The team also discussed the value of hosting another live theme review and Q&A session to help contributors build confidence in the review process.

NOTE: If you’d like to have a topic added to the agenda for our next meeting, please mention it in the comments on an upcoming agenda.