[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #50673: Create "Accessibility Statement" tool with features equivalent to Privacy Policy Tools

[WordPress Trac]

#50673: Create "Accessibility Statement" tool with features equivalent to Privacy
Policy Tools
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 Reporter:  mrwweb           |       Owner:  audrasjb
     Type:  feature request  |      Status:  reviewing
 Priority:  normal           |   Milestone:  Awaiting Review
Component:  General          |     Version:
 Severity:  normal           |  Resolution:
 Keywords:  2nd-opinion      |     Focuses:  accessibility
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Comment (by sarahricker):

 Hey @mrwweb! The Accessibility Team discussed this proposal in our weekly
 meeting on 07/17/2020. Ultimately, I believe we were all in agreement that
 this is a good endeavor to help educate and spread awareness on Web
 Accessibility, though we agreed it should be fairly open ended and
 optional, much like the existing Privacy Statement feature. Here is a
 summary for each of our discussion points:

 **Proper / Intended Use of the Feature:**
 - Just like the Privacy Statement page, site owners should be invited to
 use it to generate an accessibility statement.
 - The tool could have some content (ideally generated by WordPress, not by
 an external tool) that site owners could use as is, edit, or ignore.

 **Potential Misuse of the Feature:**
 - If sites claim they're accessible, it doesn't actually avoid any
 responsibility for being accessible.
 - Users are responsible for the information they elect to publish.
 (Similar to potentially publishing false information in the Privacy
 Statement).
 - The intro text on that page could also give guidance, thus becoming a
 small token to educate people.

 **Resources:**
 - Providing resources to the site owners about accessibility and the legal
 framework of web accessibility would be critical to understanding the
 intent of the feature and proper adoption of the tool. A few resources we
 discussed that would be helpful:
 1. The "minimal example" from the W3C:
 https://www.w3.org/WAI/planning/statements/minimal-example/
 2. The generator from the W3C:
 https://www.w3.org/WAI/planning/statements/generator/#create
 3. We also discussed the possibility of scanning the site's front end to
 help suggest content for their Accessibility statement, but since there
 are many tools with different testing methods, that's probably not a route
 this feature should take. However, even simply linking to the W3C's list
 of tools may help encourage site owners to begin Accessibility Testing of
 their own sites: https://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/tools/

 Hope that helps, let us know if we can provide any more feedback. Thanks!
 Sarah

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Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/50673#comment:3>
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