On Thursday, January 15, 2026, 15:00 UTC, a team meeting started in #accessibility facilitated by Krupa Nanda. You can read the full transcript or see the meeting agenda.
- WordPress 7.0: Call for Volunteers is closed now.
- The WordPress 6.9 release retrospective is closed. Thank you everyone who took time to share their feedback! Because community input plays an important role in improving future release cycles!
- A detailed post outlining the upcoming PHP PHP (recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a widely-used open source general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for web development and can be embedded into HTML. https://www.php.net/manual/en/preface.php. support changes has been published. WordPress 7.0 will drop support for PHP 7.2 and 7.3, in line with long-term maintenance and security goals. Contributors are encouraged to review the post for full details and timelines.
WordPress Accessibility Accessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility) Meetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area.: Call for Speakers
The WordPress Accessibility Meetup team is still looking for speakers for upcoming sessions this year. Some key high lights:
- Meetups are held twice a month
- Sessions take place on Zoom and are live-captioned
If you’re interested in speaking, please review the meetup details and apply using this link.
Working Group Updates
Work continues on expanding and improving the Accessibility documentation on wpaccessibility.org. @joedolson and @alh0319 did a great job. Recent highlights include:
@rianrietveld is working on documentation related to web forms, as well as a new reading guide to help users find relevant information more easily.
@joedolson shared that with a release date now set for WordPress 7.0, timelines are moving quickly. While there are currently 41 tickets milestoned for 7.0, it’s expected that not all will land within the release timeframe.
Upcoming bug scrubs will focus on:
- Moving milestone tickets forward
- Evaluating readiness for inclusion in 7.0
The ticket #63895 was shared and for that the initial testing has not revealed issues across providers so far. While additional test cases (including Shutterstock, Adobe Stock, Getty, and iStock) would be beneficial, the ticket is likely to move forward unless new issues are identified.
@joedolson mentioned that the current focus areas include reviewing new blocks intended for release, such as:
- Tabs block Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience.
- Icons block
- Lightbox support in Galleries
The Tabs block, while already merged, has changed significantly since its initial review and will require another accessibility review before shipping in core Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress..
@joedolson shared an update that the theme accessibility-ready requirements have been largely completed and are now publicly available on wpaccessibility.org, though they are not yet official. He mentioned that –
- The updated guidelines are more closely aligned with WCAG WCAG is an acronym for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. These guidelines are helping make sure the internet is accessible to all people no matter how they would need to access the internet (screen-reader, keyboard only, etc) https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG21/. requirements
- Testing instructions are more detailed to support consistent reviews
- A meeting with the Themes team is scheduled later this month to discuss next steps
Existing themes will not lose their accessibility-ready status due to these changes. However, themes that are updated in the future will be expected to meet the new requirements.
Once finalized, a public post will be published to communicate these changes, followed by broader outreach and amplification. Training around the updated testing process is also planned to improve consistency across reviews.
#accessibility, #meeting-notes