Kia ora from Elpie

[Elpie]

Hi all, this is Elpie (L.P. = Lynne Pope). I am both a web designer and a developer who has been using WordPress pretty much from the start. I sat on b2/cafelog until WordPress ironed out some of the early issues then came on board and have used it ever since. I was also on the b2evolution team for awhile (which also forked from b2/cafelog) and have been active in the Mambo and Joomla projects.

I guess you could call me an open source junkie

My particular passion is in making WordPress accessible. Currently, it is not.

[davecoveney]

Hi Elpie...

Do you mean making WP accessible on the front-end (which is reasonable doable, depending on the level you're after) or the back-end? I imagine the latter would be something of a nightmare.

[Elpie]

Do you mean making WP accessible on the front-end (which is reasonable doable, depending on the level you're after) or the back-end? I imagine the latter would be something of a nightmare.

Backend. Frontend accessibility can be achieved through theme design, although there are a couple of gotchas in the core that are a pain in the neck.
Backend accessibility is a mess and getting to be a bigger mess all the time. This isn't a criticism of the core team - good PHP coders cannot be expected to be experts in HTML let alone the myriad of issues that need to be taken into account for accessibility.

[Ryan]

Kia ora Lynn :)

Where do you live? I'm travelling up the country from Dunedin to Tauranga between November 25th to December 5th via a combination of car, bus and plane so if you are somewhere on my travels northwards we could meet up if you like.

[Ryan]

This isn't a criticism of the core team - good PHP coders cannot be expected to be experts in HTML let alone the myriad of issues that need to be taken into account for accessibility.

This is something I started to ask Matt Mullenweg about at WordCamp NZ but midway through talking to him a bunch of his fans turned up on the show and distracted him :p

I'd be keen to give input on the HTML/CSS side of things but never have a clue how to go about doing that. There's quite a bit of code vommit that WordPress spews out that could have easily been fixed if it wasn't PHP coders writing it. I don't know any HTML/CSS developers who could be bothered keeping track of all WordPress development since most of it is PHP stuff.

The gallery functionality in particular needs sorting out on the front end and from looking through the admin panel there's a lot of junk in the trunk there that code be cleaned up too.

[Elpie]

Where do you live? I'm travelling up the country from Dunedin to Tauranga between November 25th to December 5th via a combination of car, bus and plane so if you are somewhere on my travels northwards we could meet up if you like.

I'm in Palmerston North and would love to meet up if you are passing through

[Elpie]

I'd be keen to give input on the HTML/CSS side of things but never have a clue how to go about doing that. There's quite a bit of code vommit that WordPress spews out that could have easily been fixed if it wasn't PHP coders writing it. I don't know any HTML/CSS developers who could be bothered keeping track of all WordPress development since most of it is PHP stuff.

The UI changes in 2.7 caused a lot of problems. I've got people still on 2.6.5 (with security fixes backported) as a result. The problem though was that its easy for people to say, "this needs to be changed" but if the core team don't understand why then getting fixes in is really difficult. I had 7 really experienced accessibility & UI people keen to get involved to work on making WP fully accessible. In the time it took from when I started asking for a list to be setup so a group could be formed, to the time it was actually set up, we lost almost all those people.

The wp-accessibility list was designed to be a place where these issues would be discussed, solutions agreed on, and patches tested before adding to trac.
http://lists.automattic.com/mailman/...-accessibility

Unless people get involved though the list won't go anywhere. Not much point me working on this stuff on my own. Besides, one single voice in the wilderness is too easy for the core team to dismiss

[Ryan]

I'm in Palmerston North and would love to meet up if you are passing through

Darn. I'm by-passing Palmerton North entirely :(

[Elpie]

Where's the nearest you'll be? Could be that we can still meet up...

[Ryan]

Wellington, December ~1st to ~4th (I can't remember the exact dates).