John Jameson

Jason Partyka

<p>Editoria11y (“editorial accessibility ally”) is a quality assurance tool built for an author’s workflow:</p>
<ol>
<li>It provides instant feedback in the post and page editors. Authors do not need to remember to press a button or visit a dashboard to check their work.</li>
<li>It checks in context on pages, not just within the post editor, allowing it to test content edited in widgets or theme features.</li>
<li>It focuses exclusively on <strong>content</strong> issues: assisting authors at improving the things that are their responsibility.</li>
</ol>
<p>This plugin is the WordPress adaptation of the open-source <a href="https://editoria11y.princeton.edu" rel="nofollow ugc">Editoria11y library</a>. Tests run in the browser and findings are stored in your own database; nothing is sent to any third party. It is meant to <strong>supplement</strong>, not replace, <a href="https://webaim.org/resources/evalquickref/" rel="nofollow ugc">testing your code and visual design</a> with developer-focused tools and testing practices.</p>
<h3>The authoring experience</h3>
<p>Check out a <a href="https://editoria11y.princeton.edu/next" rel="nofollow ugc">demo of the checker itself</a>.</p>
<ul>
<li>When <strong>logged-in authors and editors</strong> are viewing pages, Editoria11y inserts tooltips marking any issues present on the current page. Issues are also highlighted while editing in the Block Editor (Gutenberg) and Classic Editor (TinyMCE).</li>
<li>Tooltips explain each problem and what actions are needed to resolve it. Some issues are “manual checks,” which have buttons to ignore the check or mark the content as OK.</li>
<li>Clicking the main toggle shows and hides the tooltips.</li>
<li>The main toggle also allows authors to jump to the next issue, restore previously dismissed alerts, visualize text alternatives for images on the page (“alts”), view the document’s heading outline, and view site-wide detection lists.</li>
</ul>
<h3>The admin experience</h3>
<ul>
<li>Filterable reports let you explore recent issues, which pages have the most issues, which issues are most common, and which issues have been dismissed. These populate and update when published content is viewed by logged-in authors.</li>
<li>Various settings are available to constrain checks to specific parts of the page and tweak the sensitivity of several tests.</li>
</ul>
<h3>The tests</h3>
<ul>
<li>Text alternatives for visual content
<ul>
<li>Images with no alt text</li>
<li>Images with a filename as alt text</li>
<li>Images with very long alt text</li>
<li>Images with fake alt text to get around field validation (e.g. “TBD”)</li>
<li>Alt text that contains redundant text like “image of” or “photo of”</li>
<li>Images in links with alt text that appears to be describing the image instead of the link destination</li>
<li>Embedded visualizations that usually require a text alternative</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Meaningful links
<ul>
<li>Links with no text</li>
<li>Links titled with a filename</li>
<li>Links only titled with generic text: “click here,” “learn more,” “download,” etc.</li>
<li>Links that open in a new window without warning</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Document outline and structure
<ul>
<li>Skipped heading levels</li>
<li>Empty headings</li>
<li>Very long headings</li>
<li>Suspiciously short blockquotes that may actually be headings</li>
<li>All-bold paragraphs with no punctuation that may actually be headings</li>
<li>Suspicious formatting that should probably be converted to a list (sequences of sentences that start with asterisks, emoji or incrementing numbers/letters)</li>
<li>Tables without headers</li>
<li>Empty table header cells</li>
<li>Tables with document headers (“Header 3”) instead of table headers</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>General quality assurance
<ul>
<li>LARGE QUANTITIES OF CAPS LOCK TEXT</li>
<li>Links to PDFs and other documents, reminding the user to test the download for accessibility or provide an alternate, accessible format</li>
<li>Video embeds, reminding the user to add closed captions</li>
<li>Audio embeds, reminding the user to provide a transcript</li>
<li>Social media embeds, reminding the user to provide alt attributes</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="https://editoria11y.princeton.edu/configuration/#customtests" rel="nofollow ugc">Custom results</a> provided by your JS</li>
</ul>
<h3>Credit</h3>
<p>Editoria11y’s WordPress plugin is maintained by Princeton University’s <a href="https://wds.princeton.edu/" rel="nofollow ugc">Web Development Services</a> team:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://github.com/itmaybejj" rel="nofollow ugc">John Jameson</a>: Editoria11y JS and CMS integrations</li>
<li><a href="https://github.com/jasonpartyka" rel="nofollow ugc">Jason Partyka</a>: Devops</li>
<li><a href="https://github.com/bkosborne" rel="nofollow ugc">Brian Osborne</a>: Code review</li>
<li><a href="https://www.drupal.org/u/notmike" rel="nofollow ugc">Michael Muzzie</a>: Wapuu photos</li>
</ul>
<p>Editoria11y began as a fork of the Toronto Metropolitan University’s <a href="https://sa11y.netlify.app/" rel="nofollow ugc">Sa11y Accessibility Checker</a>, and our teams regularly pass new code and ideas back and forth.</p>


Editoria11y Accessibility Checker


My agency has been installing the Editoria11y javascript as part of a custom theme on every client site for months. I was delighted to discover it's now available as an official plugin in the repository. We build sites and train clients on how to enter and update content. Editoria11y Accessibility Checker is a fantastic training tool - it helps content editors see where accessibility problems exist in their content, and helps them figure out solutions and alternatives. Using the plugin is a no-brainer; editors see the alerts right in the web page next to the problem.



Even if you're not concerned about accessibility (you should be), you can use this plugin to highlight issues that affect SEO, since accessibility is closely related to SEO. We're going to be using this plugin on every site for the foreseeable future.  Thanks for building this!


A great tool for content editors


I've experimented with installing similar tools like Tota11y, Sa11y, and the Equalize Digital Accessibility Checker, but this is the tool that has stuck for me because it feels the most approachable to less-experienced editors and it provides suggestions for fixing things.



The errors are helpfully focused on issues that editors can actually do something about, and I think it mostly gets the right balance of making errors appear urgent but not overwhelming.



Each error includes an explanation of why the issue is important and how to resolve it, so that editors can actually take action. And the ability to track issue resolutions overtime in the dashboard is fabulous!


Great tool for helping editors

Content accessibility checker written to be intuitive and useful for non-technical authors and editors.

Daryll Doyle

nymble

<p>Whether you’re developing a new site or just looking to iron out any issues, Screeney helps you to visually capture client feedback and action it quickly.</p>
<p>This plugin allows you to connect your website to the Screeney bug tracking application so there’s no longer a need to add code to your website.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong><a href="https://screeney.com/" rel="nofollow ugc">Visit the Screeney website to get an account</a></strong></p>
</blockquote>


Screeney

Connects your website with the Screeney bug tracking web application.

Editoria11y Accessibility Checker vs Screeney