The World Health Organization estimates that 285 million people worldwide are living with some form of visual impairment and 39 million of those are estimated to be blind. Many people with low vision depend on speech recognition technology to navigate the web and communicate their thoughts. This type of software (more…)
Earlier this year, the WordPress project made a huge move by adopting accessibility coding standards for new and updated code. If you’re struggling to meet WCAG 2.0 guidelines in your WordPress projects and need help, check out the new Accessibility section in the WordPress.org support forums. Amanda Rush, who helps (more…)
Font Awesome, the open source vector icon collection used by more than 300 plugins on WordPress.org and many free and commercial themes, announced the beta release of its new CDN. Developers can now add a single line of code to bring the icons and CSS toolkit into their projects. The (more…)
Font Awesome creator Dave Gandy announced the release of version 4.6.0 this week. The open source vector icon collection is used on approximately 60 million websites, including high profile sites like whitehouse.gov, thebeatles.com, and washingtonpost.com. Additionally, more than 300 plugins on WordPress.org and dozens of themes use Font Awesome in (more…)
Last month WordPress contributors approved accessibility coding standards for the core handbook. All new and updated code will need to conform with WCAG 2.0 level AA guidelines. With WordPress core moving firmly in the direction of accessibility, its new guidelines set the bar for themes, plugins, and websites built on (more…)
The 31st Annual International Technology and Persons with Disabilities Conference was held in San Diego, California, last week. Every year thousands of attendees gather to share knowledge and best practices for technology that removes barriers for people with disabilities. This year Rian Rietveld was recognized by Knowbility.org for her accessibility (more…)
The Accessibility Team announced today that the WordPress Accessibility Coding Standards have been approved for the core handbook. The team sought feedback on the draft of the guidelines earlier this year and, after a few revisions, the coding standards are out of draft status. Contributors will now be required to (more…)
In June 2015 Deque, an accessibility consultancy, open sourced aXe, its accessibility rules engine for automated web UI testing. aXe is a compact JavaScript library (~100 KB) that executes automated accessibility tests inside your testing framework or browser. Deque outlined a number of advantages that the aXe library has over (more…)
The WordPress Accessibility team is seeking feedback on a draft that outlines accessibility coding standards for WordPress core. According to the draft, new features should meet the accessibility guidelines before merging into core. All code released in WordPress must conform with the WCAG 2.0 guidelines at level AA. These basic (more…)
After three months in the WordPress.org theme review queue, Morten Rand-Hendriksen‘s new mobile-first theme is now live in the official theme directory. Popper is one of the few themes worthy of the “accessibility ready” tag, which requires the author to meet all of the WordPress Accessibility Guidelines. This includes features (more…)
BuddyPress 2.4.0 “Pietro” named after an authentic Italian restaurant in Paris, France is available for download. This release includes support for cover photos that users can add to their profile or a group. Cover photos are built on top of the BuddyPress Attachments API meaning they should seamlessly integrate into (more…)
Many influential WordPress projects, such as Aesop Story Engine, PodsCamp, and WordPress Post Forking, found their beginnings and/or second winds on Kickstarter, IndieGoGo, or another crowdfunding platform. A successful campaign funded by passionate supporters can make an idea into reality or bring fresh momentum for another round of development. Kayosey (more…)