The WPCampus Gutenberg Accessibility Audit

In late 2018, WPCampus released a request for proposals to conduct an accessibility audit of the WordPress Gutenberg editor. Our vendor was selected and our final fundraising goal was set at $31,200.

On April 29, 2019, Tenon LLC provided the final audit report to WPCampus. As of May 1, 2019, all documents provided by Tenon are now available.

This audit is intended to help higher education institutions, and the whole WordPress community, make informed decisions about when and how to upgrade to the new editor.

Read the audit report

We recommend you read the audit report as part of an overall write up.

Access the audit report

Audit webinar

A free, public webinar took place Monday, May 13, 2019 at 12:00 PM CDT to discuss the results.

Access the webinar recording and transcript

Audit timeline

• October 24, 2018: Announced RFP for audit
• November 27, 2018: Began fundraising for audit
• December 5, 2018: Audit was fully funded
• December 6, 2018: WordPress 5.0 (including Gutenberg) was released
• December 2018: Tenon selected as vendor
• Early January 2019: Project kickoff
• Thursday, January 31, 2019: Progress update at WPCampus Online
• Thursday, February 28, 2019: Last day to donate to the audit
• Monday, April 29, 2019: Full audit results provided to WPCampus
• Wednesday, May 1, 2019: Audit report released
• Monday, May 13, 2019: Public webinar to discuss the audit results

Follow progress on resolving found issues

• The issues originally submitted to Github
• The issues in WordPress Trac with the keyword “wpcampus-report”
• Follow the WordPress Accessibility blog

Who helped with the audit?

The project was managed by Rachel Cherry, the Director of WPCampus, and Brian DeConinck, a Web developer at NC State University.

Selection committee

For the audit, we received seven spectacular proposals, each with its own testing philosophy and approach. To help us evaluate the proposals, we reached out to friends both in higher education and in the private sector. Our selection committee included:

• Rachel Cherry – Director, WPCampus
• Brian DeConinck – Web developer, NC State University
• Joe Dolson – Web developer, accessibility consultant, and WordPress Accessibility Team Representative
• Morten Rand-Hendriksen – Senior Staff Instructor, LinkedIn Learning
• Amanda Rush – WordPress consultant, accessibility specialist, and WordPress Accessibility Team Representative
• Rachel Thompson – Director of Emerging Technology and Accessibility, University of Alabama
• Tim Wright – Director of Front End Engineering, 10up

Our generous donors

Online donations were powered by the Give WordPress plugin. A big thank-you to Impress.org for donating a license.

Automattic pledged (and donated) to ensure our accessibility audit of Gutenberg was fully funded. Thank you to Matt Mullenweg and the Automattic team for your contribution.