In reply to Morten Rand-Hendriksen.

Multiple TRT admins are against the idea of requiring all themes to meet the TRT accessibility guidelines. And, honestly, I'm not totally in favor of requiring all themes to be responsive (even though I could see that being a requirement at some point because of demand).

I think the better approach in both cases is more education and incentive for theme authors to make changes. We've seen a natural trend of themes becoming responsive simply because of user demand. If theme authors want to have actual users, they'll build responsive themes. If they want good reviews, they'll build responsive themes. If they want to upsell their "pro" version, they'll build responsive themes.

Users aren't demanding accessibility-ready themes at high numbers. They're not down-rating themes that aren't accessibility-ready. What's the incentive for theme authors here? A guideline that unnecessarily makes the barrier to entry even higher is not a good enough incentive.

You know I'm in favor having more themes meet accessibility standards. Making it a requirement is not the right approach.

One of the ideas we sometimes pitch around is finding ways to promote the good themes. We need ways of featuring the best themes that are doing things like handling RTL languages, meeting accessibility guidelines, and adapting to any device. If I were doing this myself, I'd put a new theme every month at the top of the featured list that met all of the standards we think make it one of the best themes available. Accessibility-ready could absolutely be one of those standards.

Promote the good stuff. Provide incentives for others to do better.