Contributor days are events that happen at major WordCamps. Contributor Days are events like WordCamp US or WordCamp EU can have hundreds of contributors working together, simultaneously. If you need any help, talk to the contributor day organizer, or ask your question in the #accessibility channel on Slack.
Contributor Day Activities
At a contributor day or drive we have two primary tasks:
- Improve the accessibility of WordPress core, the bundled themes and WordPress.org
- Teach designers, developers and content writers about web accessibility
Learn about accessibility
The team leads can give several workshops / presentations on request. These presentations are online and free for anyone to give:
- Writing accessible content (for content managers)
- Keyboard navigation (for developers)
- Accessibility, where to start (for everyone involved in a web project)
In the handbook you can find best practices and resources about accessibility.
Improve Accessibility in WordPress
How can you help improve WordPress?
- Developers and designers who know how to contribute to core and want to take up, test, or discuss issues
- Designers who want to help in discussions about making things beautiful and also accessible
- Accessibility testers to help find new issues, test fixes, and discuss solutions
You can work at the accessibility table or at the core, themes or design tables. Accessibility touches many aspects of the project. All designers, developers and testers are welcome to pick up any task that fits them.
In the WordPress Slack channel #accessibility you can ask for work with priority or for help with choosing a task. The time needed for a task depends on the complexity of the issue. But testing a patch or fix, confirming a bug, or adding ideas is also useful and usually quicker.
Work on accessibility tickets for WordPress core
If you know how to contribute to WordPress core, as a developer or designer, please join us and fix a ticket or test a patch!
An overview of all accessibility tickets is gathered on the page Accessibility related tickets in WordPress trac. You can also ask the team lead for tickets that have priority and check the good first bug report or ask in the #accessibility channel in Slack.
Work on the Block Editor
The Block Editor has been the primary editing environment for WordPress since version 5.0. Development on the editor is ongoing. Development on the block editor is done in GitHub through the “Gutenberg” plugin. This plugin is where new features are experimented on and fixes are implemented before being merged back to WordPress core.
Issues you can work on as a developer or designer are in the Gutenberg GitHub repo labeled with “Accessibility”.
Test the Block Editor
If you know your way around assistive technology like screen readers, or can navigate sites using only your keyboard, your experience with the block editor is appreciated! The Gutenberg plugin is released on a biweekly schedule, so it’s usually pretty close to the latest state of development. However, if you want to run tests on code that is not yet merged, you’ll probably need to be able to work in a local development environment.
Please read the page Gutenberg Accessibility Testing on how to test the plugin.
Work on WordPress.org (meta)
Accessibility issues of the website wordpress.org are listed in the meta trac.
WordPress.org is enormous, and there are always items that haven’t been tested yet. If you’re an accessibility tester, please take a look at the site and it’s functionality and report any issues you find.