WordPress is global in reach and open source in nature. And you would assume that what allows the software to be used by anyone would also enable it to be built by anyone. After all, your location doesn’t matter, and who employs you also doesn’t matter. And your relative social standing certainly shouldn’t matter. As long as you can communicate with the others contributing to the project, there should be no obstacle to your participation.

That was Josepha Haden on the “Cherishing WordPress Diversity” episode of the WP Briefing Podcast, speaking about the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion within the fabric of the WordPress project. Her statement captures the spirit of the WordPress open source project, and we hope it resonates with you. Now, let’s dive in!

Say hello to WordPress 5.8

WordPress version 5.8, “Tatum,” came out on July 20. Version 5.8 is a major release that offers features like block-based widgets, a host of new blocks and patterns, a template editor, a duotone feature to stylize images, theme.json, and support for webP images, to name a few. Read more in the release post, the field guide, and the talking points post for meetup groups.

Want to contribute to WordPress core? 

• Join the  #core channel, follow the Core Team blog, and check out the team handbook. Don’t miss the Core Team chats on Wednesdays at 5 AM and 8 PM UTC.
• Translate WordPress to your local language — here’s the latest translation status.
• Contact the Marketing Team in the #marketing slack channel, if you wish to support social media engagement around WordPress 5.8.

Gutenberg Version 11.0 is released

Contributor teams released the 11th version of Gutenberg on July 9. Version 11.0, which focuses heavily on backports and bug fixes, showcases some cool features such as an editing overlay for template parts and reusable blocks, and support for CSS shorthand properties in theme.json and block attributes. Version 11.1 was also shipped this month, on July 21. The release adds custom block borders as block supports and adds “drag and drop” to the list view. 

Want to get involved in building Gutenberg? Follow the Core Team blog, contribute to Gutenberg on GitHub, and join the #core-editor channel in the Make WordPress Slack. The “What’s next in Gutenberg” post offers more details on the latest updates. 

Returning to in-person WordPress events

The Community Team kicked off work to bring back in-person WordPress events. The team recently announced that in-person WordPress meetups can be organized in a region if the local public health authority allows in-person events and if the region passes the in-person safety checklist. If the region does not meet guidelines on page one of the safety checklist, organizers can plan events for fully vaccinated, recently tested (negative), or recently recovered community members. Subsequently, the team also shared a proposal for the return to in-person WordCamps in places that meet the safety guidelines and the vaccination/testing requirements. Please share your feedback on the post if you have any thoughts. For more context, check out the “In Person!” episode of the WP Briefing Podcast. 

Want to contribute to the Community Team? Follow the Community Team blog, or join them in the #community channel in the Make WordPress Slack. 

BuddyPress 9.0 is out

The BuddyPress team is busy! Within barely a month of their last major release (version 8.0), the team shipped version 9.0 on July 19. Key features of the release include widget blocks and updates to the BP REST API.  Download it from the WordPress.org plugin directory or check it out from its subversion repository. Want to help build BuddyPress? Follow their developer relations blog, check out their handbook page, or join them in the #buddypress channel in the Make WordPress Slack.

WordPress Event updates

• WordCamp US is coming back on October 1, 2021, as a daylong online event!
• Free tickets for WordCamp Florianopolis (August 11-12) are now available.
• The Diverse Speaker Training group of the Community Team announced three new programs for Meetup and WordCamp organizers. Sign up for the inaugural allyship program for event organizers on August 19, 2021, at 5:00 — 7:00 pm UTC!
• The Polyglots Team is planning a month-long translation day celebration in September 2021, with two weeks of “core events” from September 17 to 30. The team will announce more details on the event shortly, and you can follow all the latest updates on their P2. 
• Stay updated on online WordPress meetups around the world by following the Marketing Team’s WordPress Meetup roundup every Monday. 
• WordCamp Santa Clarita 2021 was held online on July 17-18, 2021. The highlight of the event, which had 41 speakers, 19 sponsors, and 672 attendees, was a dedicated track for WordPress accessibility. Videos of the event will soon be posted on WordPress.tv.
• The Hosting Team organized their first meetup in June. Check out the event recording.

Feedback requests from WordPress contributor teams

Please help these WordPress contributor teams by answering their research requests:

• The Core Team has published a WordPress 5.8 release retrospective. Share your release feedback as comments on the post or by filling out this form before August 15. The team is also requesting feedback on a “proof of concept” for the new WordPress updater. 
• The Training Team wishes to find what learners and potential learners would like to see in the learn.wordpress.org platform. To contribute, please fill out an anonymous survey (by August 13) OR join a short video call to share feedback (on the week of August 2-6).
• The Polyglots Team announced that “Polyglots Training” (a course to help WordPress translators and communities) is now available for testing. Sign up now!
• The Test Team wants to hear from theme authors on how they use theme.json in order to shape its future. Help them by filling out this survey on or before August 13.
• The Marketing Team is doing research on building engagement around WordPress releases. Please help the team by filling out this quick, two-question survey on how you search for release information. If you have any favorite features from the latest release (WordPress 5.8) let the team know by completing this short form.

Further reading

• The Meta Team launched the new WordPress Pattern Directory alongside the 5.8 release. The Design Team also contributed to this project, working with contributors on launching around 85 block patterns in the directory.
• Check out the following blog posts from the Design Team: A Walk Around: The Search Block and Widgets on 5.8 and beyond. Join their Show and Tell meetings on the last Wednesday of each month to learn about updates on their latest projects and new ideas.
• Check out this blog post to learn how to configure theme design with theme.json. 
• The Test Team has put out a call for team-rep nominations.
• The Themes Team is in the process of discussing updated theme directory guidelines.
• Version 17.9 of WordPress for Android and iOS are now available for testing.

Have a story that we should include in the next “Month in WordPress” post? Please submit it using this form. 

The following folks contributed to July’s Month in WordPress:  @webcommsat @chaion07 @jillbinder @lmurillom @meher

In this episode, Josepha Haden Chomphosy discusses the nuances of building accessible software, the differences between access, usability, and accessibility, and how this all applies to the WordPress project.

Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to wpbriefing@wordpress.org, either written or as a voice recording.

Credits

• Editor: Dustin Hartzler
• Logo: Beatriz Fialho
• Production: Chloé Bringmann
• Transcription: Nicholas Garofalo
• Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod

References

• About WordPress Accessibility
• Make WordPress Accessibility Team
• WordPress Accessibility Team Twitter
• WordPress Accessibility Handbook
• Accessibility Coding Standards
• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)
• A11y Checklist
• The Digital Divide

Transcript

[contemporary intro music]

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 0:10

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the WordPress Briefing, the podcast where you can catch quick explanations of the ideas behind the WordPress open source project, some insight into the community that supports it, and get a small list of big things coming up in the next two weeks. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go.

[musical interlude]

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 0:28

This is the second of my big scary topics for this month. I’ll be talking about accessibility, which much like Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, or DEI in the last episode, is one of those areas where the work is never finished. Also, like DEI in last episode, I feel strongly about accessibility and the need for accessible experiences in the world, but I’m aware that this is an area where I’m still learning.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 1:04

WordPress has both an accessibility statement and team, which makes a lot of sense given that the software supports so many different people, and industries, and cultures. But if you’re not quite bought into the idea that software should be accessible, or that accessible software can’t also be usable, then this is the episode for you.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 1:25

Before I joined the WordPress project, the majority of my work with accessibility was in the context of the digital divide. Now, when talking about the digital divide, there are three concepts around quote-unquote, “getting things to people,” and those are access, usability, and accessibility. Sometimes these words seem interchangeable, but ultimately they have nuanced differences that address different problems. And I like to think of them this way.

Access is making sure that someone can obtain something.

Usability is making sure that the user experience is understandable or coherent.

And accessibility is making sure that it’s usable by the largest number of people.

I have always considered each as a subset of the one that came before it. So having something everyone can access is good, but easy to access and easy to use is better. Easy to use is good, but easy to use and easily accessible is better.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 2:27

After joining WordPress, I discovered that accessibility in the context of software building is well, substantially more complicated. There’s no such thing as perfect accessibility, or a site that is 100% accessible, and many aspects are pretty open to interpretation. It turns out that accessibility, like so many things in WordPress, is a complicated intersection of art and science.

As an example, there’s a rule that says, “Ensure that links are recognizable as links.” A fast shorthand to accomplish that, that we see all over the internet, is to underline all links or put that icon next to it that says, “This opens in a new tab.” You know that icon that’s a box with an arrow? That definitely has a name, that I definitely don’t know? That icon. [laughing] But those solutions don’t necessarily fit every context that you’ll find a link in, and that’s where we see that intersection between the art of communication and the science of necessity.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 3:32

If you came with me earlier on the idea that accessibility is a subset of usability, and it’s not a far leap to say that the choices around accessibility implementations should always include design and the overall user experience.

I know that some of you are thinking, “But we have guidelines! Like, that’s why we have the guidelines, so that not everything has to be a gray area.” And on the one hand, yeah, that’s true. There are a lot of guidelines. There are guidelines for the code, and what the code produces, and the design elements. But I worry that when a solution is driven solely by rules, rather than reasons, we run the risk of throwing out the good along with the bad.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 4:15

Accessibility has been a consistent topic of debate in the project for as long as I can remember, and based on all of this, it’s really clear why. There are a few big picture questions that still deserve some sort of canonical answer for WordPress, and where possible I dig in and research the positions that everyone has taken in the past. But I also have questions about how to move everything forward, especially as the editing experience gets more and more standardized across the software, which reduces cognitive load, shortens the learning curve, etc.

What is the future possibility for having a series of more niche admin interface options?

What would it be like to be able to account for functional limitations in a way that lets site builders select what is needed for their clients or organization, or just individual situations they know their sites would be maintained under?

What more could we do if part of the setup flow of WordPress was to select some bundle of potential add ons for neuro diversity, or colorblindness, or dyslexia, and more?

It’s a really big question I have.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 5:26

And I have to be really transparent here and share that my foundational understanding of accessibility and usability is 10 plus years old, and I learned it in the context of people in education, not software. So a lot of my questions about the future of accessibility and WordPress is the result of old knowledge exploring new spaces, which means they are a little untested. And I’m so grateful for the contributors who point out what the current research and thinking is, in this incredibly complex field.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 6:00

I normally like to wrap up the briefing with a tidy takeaway, but this particular topic doesn’t really lend itself to that. So I’ll leave you with this. I really believe in WordPress’ mission to democratize publishing. And I, for one, will never stop learning about what gives people more access to the software, and what makes the software more usable, and especially how we can combine usability with accessibility in a way that puts form and function on a level playing field.

[musical interlude]

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 6:40

And now, that brings us to our small list of big things.

Thing one, it’s that time of year where many of our community members take a short break to relax and refresh. I’ll be taking a bit of a break during the month of August, and so the WP Briefing will return again starting in September.

And thing two, huge thanks to the production crew that helps me make this podcast every couple of weeks, but a special shout out to our editor Dustin Hartzler, who makes quick work of all of my rambling thoughts.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 7:09

And that is your small list of big things. Thank you for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, and I’ll see you again in September.

[contemporary outro music]

In this episode, Josepha Haden Chomphosy discusses the nuances of building accessible software, the differences between access, usability, and accessibility, and how this all applies to the WordPress project.

Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to wpbriefing@wordpress.org, either written or as a voice recording.

Credits

• Editor: Dustin Hartzler
• Logo: Beatriz Fialho
• Production: Chloé Bringmann
• Transcription: Nicholas Garofalo
• Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod

References

• About WordPress Accessibility
• Make WordPress Accessibility Team
• WordPress Accessibility Team Twitter
• WordPress Accessibility Handbook
• Accessibility Coding Standards
• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)
• A11y Checklist
• The Digital Divide

Transcript

[contemporary intro music]

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 0:10

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the WordPress Briefing, the podcast where you can catch quick explanations of the ideas behind the WordPress open source project, some insight into the community that supports it, and get a small list of big things coming up in the next two weeks. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go.

[musical interlude]

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 0:28

This is the second of my big scary topics for this month. I’ll be talking about accessibility, which much like Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, or DEI in the last episode, is one of those areas where the work is never finished. Also, like DEI in last episode, I feel strongly about accessibility and the need for accessible experiences in the world, but I’m aware that this is an area where I’m still learning.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 1:04

WordPress has both an accessibility statement and team, which makes a lot of sense given that the software supports so many different people, and industries, and cultures. But if you’re not quite bought into the idea that software should be accessible, or that accessible software can’t also be usable, then this is the episode for you.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 1:25

Before I joined the WordPress project, the majority of my work with accessibility was in the context of the digital divide. Now, when talking about the digital divide, there are three concepts around quote-unquote, “getting things to people,” and those are access, usability, and accessibility. Sometimes these words seem interchangeable, but ultimately they have nuanced differences that address different problems. And I like to think of them this way.

Access is making sure that someone can obtain something.

Usability is making sure that the user experience is understandable or coherent.

And accessibility is making sure that it’s usable by the largest number of people.

I have always considered each as a subset of the one that came before it. So having something everyone can access is good, but easy to access and easy to use is better. Easy to use is good, but easy to use and easily accessible is better.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 2:27

After joining WordPress, I discovered that accessibility in the context of software building is well, substantially more complicated. There’s no such thing as perfect accessibility, or a site that is 100% accessible, and many aspects are pretty open to interpretation. It turns out that accessibility, like so many things in WordPress, is a complicated intersection of art and science.

As an example, there’s a rule that says, “Ensure that links are recognizable as links.” A fast shorthand to accomplish that, that we see all over the internet, is to underline all links or put that icon next to it that says, “This opens in a new tab.” You know that icon that’s a box with an arrow? That definitely has a name, that I definitely don’t know? That icon. [laughing] But those solutions don’t necessarily fit every context that you’ll find a link in, and that’s where we see that intersection between the art of communication and the science of necessity.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 3:32

If you came with me earlier on the idea that accessibility is a subset of usability, and it’s not a far leap to say that the choices around accessibility implementations should always include design and the overall user experience.

I know that some of you are thinking, “But we have guidelines! Like, that’s why we have the guidelines, so that not everything has to be a gray area.” And on the one hand, yeah, that’s true. There are a lot of guidelines. There are guidelines for the code, and what the code produces, and the design elements. But I worry that when a solution is driven solely by rules, rather than reasons, we run the risk of throwing out the good along with the bad.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 4:15

Accessibility has been a consistent topic of debate in the project for as long as I can remember, and based on all of this, it’s really clear why. There are a few big picture questions that still deserve some sort of canonical answer for WordPress, and where possible I dig in and research the positions that everyone has taken in the past. But I also have questions about how to move everything forward, especially as the editing experience gets more and more standardized across the software, which reduces cognitive load, shortens the learning curve, etc.

What is the future possibility for having a series of more niche admin interface options?

What would it be like to be able to account for functional limitations in a way that lets site builders select what is needed for their clients or organization, or just individual situations they know their sites would be maintained under?

What more could we do if part of the setup flow of WordPress was to select some bundle of potential add ons for neuro diversity, or colorblindness, or dyslexia, and more?

It’s a really big question I have.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 5:26

And I have to be really transparent here and share that my foundational understanding of accessibility and usability is 10 plus years old, and I learned it in the context of people in education, not software. So a lot of my questions about the future of accessibility and WordPress is the result of old knowledge exploring new spaces, which means they are a little untested. And I’m so grateful for the contributors who point out what the current research and thinking is, in this incredibly complex field.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 6:00

I normally like to wrap up the briefing with a tidy takeaway, but this particular topic doesn’t really lend itself to that. So I’ll leave you with this. I really believe in WordPress’ mission to democratize publishing. And I, for one, will never stop learning about what gives people more access to the software, and what makes the software more usable, and especially how we can combine usability with accessibility in a way that puts form and function on a level playing field.

[musical interlude]

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 6:40

And now, that brings us to our small list of big things.

Thing one, it’s that time of year where many of our community members take a short break to relax and refresh. I’ll be taking a bit of a break during the month of August, and so the WP Briefing will return again starting in September.

And thing two, huge thanks to the production crew that helps me make this podcast every couple of weeks, but a special shout out to our editor Dustin Hartzler, who makes quick work of all of my rambling thoughts.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 7:09

And that is your small list of big things. Thank you for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, and I’ll see you again in September.

[contemporary outro music]