Did this ever get an accessibility review?

  • Twenty Seventeen is a beautiful theme but it isn’t accessible. It’s not usable for corporate sites that have to comply with Federal government accessibility requirements. The description tags for this theme have “Accessibility ready” but that does not mean it is accessible.

    I can’t imagine why the developers designed it with no sidebar on the homepage. Because the header image fills the window and doesn’t even show the navigation menu or down arrow, most users aren’t going to know that to go anywhere on the site, they must scroll down. Clicking on the image does nothing.

    For accessibility, it has a lot of problems for screen readers and others who use tabbing for navigating a site and no screen reader help. The first tab takes me to the bottom of the first section and not to the top navigation menu, the second tab does nothing, the third tab takes me to the middle of the second section instead of the header for that section. The fifth tab takes me to the middle of the featured image and the top of the third section (better). The seventh tab takes me to the full screen featured image with no header. The third, fifth, and seventh tabs take you to various pieces of the second, third, and fourth sections but still doesn’t let users know where they are on the site or know they are still on the home page. The second, fourth, and sixth tabs do nothing. Non-exploring users are not going to know where they are or how to get anywhere else. The first tab should take users to the navigation menu. The first section of the Home page should have a sidebar so users know how to log on–that’s completely hidden until you have a long scroll down because None of the tabs take you to the bottom of the page for the widgets there. I’ll be getting a lot of “How do I log on?” questions. (It obviously never had an accessibility review, which I thought was required for all new themes or should be for all Twenty-something themes to meet coding standards.)

    I’d be happy with front page sidebars that are short to allow corporate items required and at least a navigation list or logon box in the sidebar with a Note link at the bottom of the sidebar that says something like: the full sidebar can be seen on the individual pages shown in this front page section. Probably easier to implement would be to have at least a sidebar that does that on just the first section (Home).

    Useable tabbing or a link to the bottom widgets would be helpful.

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  • Hi @sleeplessindc,

    Thanks for using Twenty Seventeen!

    Twenty Seventeen is a beautiful theme but it isn’t accessible. It’s not usable for corporate sites that have to comply with Federal government accessibility requirements. The description tags for this theme have “Accessibility ready” but that does not mean it is accessible.

    Members of the WordPress community tested the theme according to these accessibility standards. A theme can’t be fully accessible because much of that relies on a site’s content. But the theme is as accessible as it can be so if you need to make an accessible site, it can be done so.

    For accessibility, it has a lot of problems for screen readers and others who use tabbing for navigating a site and no screen reader help. The first tab takes me to the bottom of the first section and not to the top navigation menu, the second tab does nothing, the third tab takes me to the middle of the second section instead of the header for that section. The fifth tab takes me to the middle of the featured image and the top of the third section (better). The seventh tab takes me to the full screen featured image with no header. The third, fifth, and seventh tabs take you to various pieces of the second, third, and fourth sections but still doesn’t let users know where they are on the site or know they are still on the home page. The second, fourth, and sixth tabs do nothing. Non-exploring users are not going to know where they are or how to get anywhere else.

    I’m not able to replicate this using the theme’s official demo site. Tabbing for me goes in order of the content areas as I would expect.

    I’ll be getting a lot of “How do I log on?” questions. (It obviously never had an accessibility review, which I thought was required for all new themes or should be for all Twenty-something themes to meet coding standards.)

    If logging into WordPress is important to your users, you can add it as a link to your main menu with Custom Menus in the Customizer. If you need help on that, see this guide.

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