WordPress 6.2 Accessibility Improvements

WordPress 6.2 Accessibility Improvements

WordPress 6.2 is all set to launch on March 28th. And this post seeks to provide an overview of the many accessibility improvements and fixes coming to the next major WordPress release. According to Annezazu, there’s more work to be done with accessibility requiring an ongoing effort and commitment. Outside of the work mentioned below, there have been numerous moments of collaboration around accessibility as features were developed including splitting tabs in block settingsintroducing browse mode, and the additional option to edit the navigation block in the block settings.

If you would like to help with these efforts, then join the #accessibility channel in Make Slack and check out how you can get involved. There are numerous ways to get involved in this work including testing, giving accessibility feedback, and creating PRs to address feedback.

Navigation block

  • Announce when a block is inserted in the Navigation list view. (47034)
  • Fix various off canvas appender accessibility issues. (47047)
  • Better handling of loading states for navigation selector. (43904)

General block editor experience

  • TabPanel: Support manual tab activation. (46004)
  • Keycodes: Fix tilde (~) character isn’t displayed correctly. (46826)
  • Update text align toolbar control label. (47119)
  • Sidebar Tabs: Set default tab to first available. (45998)
  • Make the inline toolbar navigable by arrow keys. (43645)
  • Block Variation Picker: Remove Unnecessary ARIA Role. (45916)
  • Ensure block labels and titles consider variations. (44250)
  • use Navigate Regions: Use closest to determine the next region to navigate to. (44883)
  • Fix focus return when closing the Post publish panel. (45623)
  • Fix the navigate regions focus style. (45369)
  • Fix navigate regions backwards for macOS Firefox and Safari. (45019)
  • Fix the block toolbar styling when the ‘Show button text labels’ preference is enabled. (44779)
  • Fix the Save buttons labeling and tooltip. (43952)
  • Focus on the first parent block on block removal if no previous block is available (48204). This is underway but not yet merged.

Contrast Checker improvements

  • Limit contrast checker to only blocks that have at least one color defined. (43592)
  • Fix: Contrast checker appears unexpectedly on some blocks. (45639)
  • Fix: Contrast checker does not update properly. (45686)

Site editor

  • Change SpacingSizesControl ARIA from region to group. (46530)
  • Browse mode: Fix aria region navigation in the site editor. (46525)
  • Browse mode: Allow resizing the sidebar in the site editor using keyboard. (47176)
  • Browse mode: Add an aria label to the site save dialog. (47898)
  • Style Book: Focus the Style Book when opened, and enable ESCAPE key to close (48151).
  • Style Book: Allow button text labels for style book icon. (48088)
  • Add role=application to List View to prevent browse mode triggering in NVDA. (44291)
  • Make the template customized info accessible. (48159)

Other:

  • Add “Testing Instructions for Keyboard” to PR template to encourage accessibility testing. (45957)
  • Constrained tabbing: Fix unstable behavior in FireFox. (42653)
  • TokenInput field: fix screen reader focus issue. (44526)

Source:WordPress.org

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