Two New WordPress Plugins Improve Block Editor Accessibility and WCAG Compliance – WP Tavern
WordPress Core Committer Jb Audras, CTO of the France-based Whodunit company, has launched two new accessibility plugins in cooperation with Guillaume Turpin, one other developer on the Whodunit staff. These are small “micro” plugins developed to fill gaps within the block editor’s accessible content material creation expertise.
The primary plugin known as Lang Attribute for the Block Editor and is necessary for content material that’s written in a number of languages. It permits content material creators to point language adjustments utilizing the lang attribute in order that these utilizing assistive applied sciences will get the right presentation and pronunciation guidelines for the desired language. This plugin helps WordPress websites meet the necessities of the WCAG Success Criterion 3.1.2 “Language of Components.”
With the plugin put in, content material creators can spotlight textual content after which discover the language attribute within the block toolbar to edit it.
“It’s value noting that indicating language adjustments in content material is obligatory for WCAG compliance, and there’s at the moment no approach to do this within the Block Editor (besides by modifying the code manually),” Audras said when introducing the plugin on Twitter. “I believe this function needs to be carried out natively into Gutenberg.”
The second micro plugin known as Abbreviation Button for the Block Editor, which permits content material authors to incorporate definitions for abbreviations utilizing the <abbr> HTML component. This allows website guests to entry the expanded type of abbreviations, as outlined by WCAG success criterion 3.1.4 “Abbreviations.”
The WCAG establish a couple of sorts of guests who could also be helped by the Abbreviations, together with those that have issue decoding phrases, those that depend on display magnifiers, have a restricted reminiscence, and those that have issue utilizing context to help understanding.
The abbreviation tag may also be discovered within the block toolbar, so customers can spotlight any textual content for which they wish to present the expanded type of the abbreviation.
Each the Abbreviation Button and the Language Attribute plugins can be found without cost within the WordPress plugins listing. The plugins’ creators hope that a few of this performance can ultimately be added to the block editor, however within the meantime customers can set up the plugins to create extra accessible content material that meets accessibility pointers.
