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Gutenberg Accessibility Costs WordPress the W3C Work

This is a story that has taken up a lot of headlines, and many articles assume a fair bit of background knowledge, so I’ll be giving a longer TLDR than normal (though still largely based on Adrian Roselli‘s article above):

• The World Wide Web Consortium (WC3) are redesigning their rather clunky site, w3.org, with the help of digital agency Studio 24, whose progress you can monitor on w3c.studio24.net.
• In choosing a CMS for the new site, Studio 24 indirectly announced that it was no longer considering using WordPress. WPTavern – a site dedicated to WordPress – took issue with this, and Studio 24 clarified that the decision is due to accessibility issues in Gutenberg (WordPress’s block-based WYSIWYG interface).
• It’s now turned into a bit of a battle of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) vs Accessibility, as Craft CMS – the platform Studio 24 eventually chose – is not open source.
• Adrian goes a little bit into the history of Gutenberg and its pained relationship with accessibility, but it boils down to accessibility not being a focus for the platform. In contrast, Craft has made a public commitment to WCAG.
• Adrian concludes that the W3C has made the right call (as do other people in my echo chamber) in prioritising accessibility over what kind of license something has.

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