I have resigned as the WordPress accessibility team lead
rianrietveld.com
rianrietveld.com
"I'm super ignorant about accessibility, but I heard this one time. Here, accessibility experts, I googled this link for you. Should be easy to implement."
At any rate I'm sure that nothing I have ever worked on is as accessible as anything you have ever worked on just because what are the odds that I could have been part of anything worthwhile and what are the odds you are not just an amazing genius dropping by to let me know it? Pretty slim I bet.
in fact, you seem somewhat rude - are we acquaintances in some way?
That said considering I was just lectured on civility for much less rudeness (I of course think I was not rude at all) in a politically charged thread where rudeness is sometimes expected I believe your opinion of the site is at odds with what is at least hoped for and my surprise at the tone given the circumstances was warranted.
However where rudeness is concerned I believe I can give better than I get if need be, and you're also quite rude so here are some points:
1. When I post a link to an MDN resource it is not because I think MDN is the standard place to get React specific information. That should be obvious to anyone on this site who claims technical expertise in Web matters, and you should have stopped with the patronizing let me tell you about ARIA spiel.
2. I believe a reading through my posting history on HN will show that I at least have enough familiarity with accessibility that you don't need go give me the Aria intro. Even if linking to a part of it on MDN wasn't a clue enough. (I could have linked to W3C but as introductory pieces they are much less successful than MDN content in my opinion)
3. The article was mainly about problems with doing accessibility in React, which I agree is problematic (for big SPAs at any rate) and live regions while helpful is in many ways more difficult to do right where accessibility is concerned than a normal HTML5/JavaScript application. Many people interested in React might read that article and say damn you can't do accessibility in React, because those accessibility experts couldn't do it. I made an offhand comment on a technology I have some experience with in React, and pointed to a resource on the technology trusting that anyone interested would either research matters further or at worst ask me for clarification ( which I would hate because the reason for writing a small offhand comment and providing a simple introductory link to a technology is because I don't have time for much more)
I really, with all goodwill this time, recommend you spend your limited time and energy on more important matters than my misdirected flames. You spent it less than fruitfully in a tailspin over this, seemingly, and I'm sorry for that; I've been there. I should probably remember those hours when I post, but I am a deeply flawed and bitter person.
I didn't think you had a sneaky agenda necessarily, I just thought that account must not be your normal account if you're welcoming me. :)
1. A React app is still DOM-based. Normal accessibility practices still apply, as they do for any other SPAs
2. It takes maybe a week to learn enough of JSX and React to get started on accessibility tasks
This sounds like refusing to work on a new codebase without actually being invested into it. Also got a combative feeling from reading a few PRs, where simple style issues are discussed at length vs just fixed with one variable change. Am I reading it wrong?
All the best luck for Matthew.
Why is user experience and accessibility always someone else's problem? Why does the burden of "learning enough" to do their job correctly always fall on everyone except the engineers who advocate doing these complete rewrites?
React and JSX are not open web standards. They're popular, but they're are not a common denominator. They require you to learn and use JavaScript first and foremost and were designed uninclusively with software engineers as the audience. This is a stark contrast to the declarative languages of CSS and HTML that were designed inclusively with designers and other non-programmers as an audience.
So, you know what? It's no surprise that a React rewrite alienated an accessibility team. It's no surprise that the accessibility team worked their asses off to try to demonstrate the value of inclusiveness and tried without success to train these engineers and get problems the engineers created fixed, only to be told the issue was going about it the wrong way.
React's fanbase largely views inclusiveness and accessibility as an optional, bolt on feature that can be addressed later. As something it's okay to sacrifice on the alter of the new hotness. React's fanbase doesn't give a crap if someone who could previously contribute something very valuable very effectively can't anymore. Someone who has concerns other than learning new languages and frameworks constantly should just get out of way, they're clearly too dumb or too old to matter.
With Gutenberg almost at the edge of releasing, the a11y team lead resigning will only make things worse. Lack of understanding in accessibility is a huge problem in many software projects, and documentation alone wouldn't help it.
During the Gutenberg time, accessibility, secure updates, modern PHP, and a few other initiatives started with little to no progress in them. There is no way Gutenberg is almost released if all these initiatives were to go parallel, at least not without enough resources.
Gutenberg has been changing constantly. When it's "released" it should only be released as a final version to developers, meaning they're no longer changing it, before being released to the public.
I've known a few people who've developed Gutenberg compatible plugins, only to have it break 2 weeks later when an "update" arrived. "Update" meaning "it's been redone entirely different".
It's been noted elsewhere here - use the official "classic editor". Gutenberg offers ZERO benefits. It's simply a different way of accomplising the same tasks.