wA11y provides a toolbox of resources to help you improve the accessibility of your WordPress website.

Rachel Cherry

<p>wA11y is a WordPress plugin that provides a toolbox of resources to help you improve the accessibility of your WordPress website.</p>
<p><strong>If you would like to contribute to the plugin, or report issues, please go through <a href="https://github.com/bamadesigner/wa11y" rel="nofollow ugc">the wA11y Github repo</a>.</strong></p>
<h4>What Does “wA11y” Mean?</h4>
<p>“A11y” is the commonly used abbreviation for accessibility, since there are eleven letters between the “a” and the “y”.</p>
<p>“w” + “A11y” is my abbreviation for “web accessibility”. <strong><a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23wa11y" rel="nofollow ugc">#wa11y</a></strong></p>
<h3>What Is Web Accessibility?</h3>
<p>Web accessibility refers to the inclusive practice of removing barriers that prevent interaction with, or access to, websites by people with disabilities.</p>
<p>Data shows 1 in 5 people have a disability. If your site is inaccessible, <strong>you could be excluding 20% of your potential users, customers, students, and more.</strong></p>
<p>The foundation for good accessibility is great markup which also means that good accessibility can improve your SEO.</p>
<h3>Accessibility Resources and Tools</h3>
<p>The WPCampus community has a <a href="https://wpcampus.org/resources/accessibility/" rel="nofollow ugc">great list of accessibility resources and tools</a> available on their website.</p>
<p>This resource is open-source and WPCampus would love for you to contribute. <a href="https://github.com/wpcampus/wpcampus-resources" rel="nofollow ugc">Visit the WPCampus Resources repo</a> to learn how to contribute.</p>
<p><strong>WA11Y PRO TIP: Take advantage of in-browser testing tools, like <a href="http://wave.webaim.org/" rel="nofollow ugc">WAVE</a> and <a href="http://squizlabs.github.io/HTML_CodeSniffer/" rel="nofollow ugc">HTML_CodeSniffer</a>, to evaluate WordPress theme demos before you purchase.</strong></p>
<h3>Tools Included In wA11y</h3>
<p>The mission for the wA11y plugin is to provide a plethora of tools to help you evaluate and improve the accessibility of your website.</p>
<p><strong>If you would like to see any new tools added to the plugin, please <a href="https://github.com/bamadesigner/wa11y" rel="nofollow ugc">create an issue in the wA11y Github repo</a> and label it an “enhancement”.</strong></p>
<h3>Tota11y</h3>
<p><a href="http://khan.github.io/tota11y/" rel="nofollow ugc">tota11y</a> is an accessibility visualization toolkit provided by your friends at Khan Academy. It is a single JavaScript file that inserts a small button in the bottom corner of your document and helps visualize how your site performs with assistive technologies.</p>
<h3>WAVE</h3>
<p><a href="http://wave.webaim.org/" rel="nofollow ugc">WAVE</a> is a free evaluation tool provided by <a href="http://webaim.org/" rel="nofollow ugc">WebAIM (Web Accessibility In Mind)</a>. It can be used to evaluate a live website for a wide range of accessibility issues.</p>
<h3>Filters</h3>
<p>Filters provide a way for you to modify a piece of data inside the wA11y plugin. <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/plugins/hooks/filters/" rel="nofollow ugc">Learn more about filters</a>.</p>
<p>Here is a list of the filters available for this plugin:</p>
<ul>
<li>‘wa11y_settings’
<ul>
<li>Allows you to change the plugin settings</li>
<li>Passes 1 argument: the default settings</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>‘wa11y_wave_url’
<ul>
<li>Allows you to change the URL passed to WAVE</li>
<li>Passes 2 arguments: the default URL and the post object (if defined)</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>‘wa11y_load_tota11y’
<ul>
<li>Allows you to pass a boolean to define whether or not the tota11y tool should be loaded</li>
<li>Passes 2 arguments: the default setting and the plugin’s settings</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>‘wa11y_load_wave’
<ul>
<li>Allows you to pass a boolean to define whether or not the WAVE tool should be loaded</li>
<li>Passes 2 arguments: the default setting and the plugin’s settings</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>


wA11y – The Web Accessibility Toolbox

A Plugin Of Great Industry!
This plugin teaches you how you can make better sites/plugins/themes/WordPresses
Turn this on when your working on developing WordPress sites, plugins or themes or WordPress itself. #realtalk we've all written plenty of code that is not as accessible as it should be. Let's not make these problems worse by ensuring that everything we do write, moving forward is going to be accessible. 
5 Stars



Everyone should use this when developing websites with WordPress!

This plugin goes on all of my development sites. It makes checking the site for accessibility so much easier than using external resources. Love it.

Thank you, Rachel!!!

What a time saver!

As a developer, having this resource to be able to test my plugin directly within the WordPress dashboard and front end is HUGE. 

Accessibility matters. Since it does, having this tool in your toolbelt as a developer or even someone vetting plugins for users is phenomenal. 

With this plugin, you no longer have an excuse for putting out inaccessible websites.


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