[theme-reviewers] Help to Review in Child Theme - Accessibility Ready Theme

[Joe Dolson]

As long as we're clear that being a child of an accessibility-ready theme
doesn't entitle the theme to use the tag, just grants the opportunity, I'm
fine with that. I'll run it by the Accessibility team, too, to get some
other opinions.

I definitely like the idea of motivating accessibility in parent themes;
although that's obviously dependent on the theme authors embracing the
changes.

Best,
Joe


On Mon, Jul 21, 2014 at 4:51 PM, Chip Bennett <chip at chipbennett.net> wrote:

> I think we should strive for the goal of accessibility becoming a
> commodity rather than a feature. To that end, we should encourage
> accessibility improvements to be contributed back upstream to the parent,
> rather than segregating them in a Child Theme. Thus, I would suggest, for
> the purpose of discussion/argument, that we consider only allowing the
> "accessibility-ready" tag for Child Themes if the Parent Theme has the tag
> as well.
>
>
> On Mon, Jul 21, 2014 at 4:42 PM, Joe Dolson <design at joedolson.com> wrote:
>
>> It would really depend on the theme. Some issues are actually very simple
>> to handle via filters, minor CSS changes, enqueuing a little extra JS, etc.
>> Others are more complex, and would require some pretty significant updates.
>>
>> But really, for most themes, a11y compliance is not that complicated or
>> complex. For some of the really complicated themes? Yeah, that could be
>> difficult. But it's certainly very feasible to fix a theme via a child
>> theme.
>>
>> If a developer forks a theme in order to add accessibility, but doesn't
>> change the essential appearance of the theme, they won't be able to submit
>> it to the repo. If they do the same thing via a child theme, that would be
>> less of an issue; the need for uniqueness is significantly lower for child
>> themes.
>>
>> I think it's entirely reasonable to allow it, although I don't expect it
>> to be a big issue.
>>
>> Whether it's the best choice for a developer to make is a different issue
>> - if there are just a few issues to fix, submitting patches to the theme
>> developer would definitely be a better choice, on the whole. If it's a huge
>> project, a child theme may not be practical. But if a developer is
>> non-responsive to patches and issues, well, that limits choices.
>>
>> I'm actually more concerned about the child themes of accessibility-ready
>> themes -- I've seen a fair number of submissions of Twenty Fourteen child
>> themes that copied the accessibility-ready tag from the parent theme, but
>> broke the accessibility of the theme. There's really no guarantees either
>> way.
>>
>> Best,
>> Joe
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Jul 21, 2014 at 4:31 PM, Edward Caissie <edward.caissie at gmail.com
>> > wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> On Mon, Jul 21, 2014 at 12:41 PM, Joe Dolson <design at joedolson.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I'm not sure that's true, actually - if a child theme wants to add
>>>> accessibility features and correct accessibility issues in a parent theme,
>>>> I don't see any reason that wouldn't be allowed.
>>>
>>>
>>> Perhaps I'm not understanding the scope of accessibility ... I would
>>> suspect if the Parent-Theme is not a11y compliant enough to be able to use
>>> the "accessibility" tag the Child-Theme would almost need to re-write every
>>> template file to accommodate the a11y requirements. Maybe the functions.php
>>> would not be affected but if everything else is, it would strike me as more
>>> feasible to fork the theme rather than create a Child-Theme in these cases.
>>>
>>> Again, I could just be seeing the scope of providing a11y compliance as
>>> too large, or more complex than what it is ... there is no reason
>>> specifically that a Child-Theme could not pick up the pieces, just doesn't
>>> seem likely to be done in my limited understanding of a11y.
>>>
>>>
>>> Edward Caissie
>>> aka Cais.
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> theme-reviewers mailing list
>>> theme-reviewers at lists.wordpress.org
>>> http://lists.wordpress.org/mailman/listinfo/theme-reviewers
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> ==================
>> Joseph Dolson
>> Accessibility consultant & WordPress developer
>> http://www.joedolson.com
>> http://profiles.wordpress.org/joedolson
>>
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>>
>>
>
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-- 
==================
Joseph Dolson
Accessibility consultant & WordPress developer
http://www.joedolson.com
http://profiles.wordpress.org/joedolson
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