Accessibility-Ready WordPress Themes

Free WordPress themes in the official directory must meet strict guidelines. Most of the requirements focus on security, code quality, and feature completeness. Recently, the theme review team made certain accessibility requirements mandatory. But complete accessibility reviews are currently opt-in. The WordPress community can, and should, do better.

Why Theme Accessibility?

A WordPress theme alone does not make a site accessible. Accessibility-ready means that the code and content structure meet established requirements. Content authors must do the work to ensure that sites feature accessible content, such as semantic use of heading tags and alt text for images. Accessibility-ready themes set users up for success.

Accessible websites benefit everyone. Accessibility goes hand in hand with usability, user experience, and search engine optimization. There are numerous resources that highlight the importance of accessible web content.

Current Options

There are currently 111 WordPress themes in the official directory that meet the accessibility-ready requirements. These themes offer a variety of designs for users to pick from. But they represent a small percentage of the 7935 themes in the directory (only the 3989 themes that have been updated in the last two years are visible when browsing within WordPress).

Users must find and select a single checkbox in a sea of dozens of options to filter their theme search to the accessibility-ready options. And with only a fraction of the total themes offering this functionality, additional filters quickly leave users with few choices that fit their needs.

I am the designer of five of the themes that currently meet this criteria—four percent! My first accessibility-ready theme was actually a re-launch, of Figure/Ground 2.1. In the announcement post I made the case for artistic themes. Sites can be unique, interesting, and beautiful while also being accessible.

WordPress theme browser screenshot showing the titles and screenshots of the accessibility-ready Classic Artisan, Arbutus, Linwork, Visualize, Twenty Seventeen, and Figure/Ground WordPress Themes.
The five accessibility-ready WordPress themes that I maintain and the Twenty Seventeen theme that I contributed to.

An Opportunity for Theme Authors

Theme authors need an incentive to make their work more accessible. The community can take discrete steps to expand this program:

  1. Add an accessibility-ready tab to the theme browser
  2. Prioritize accessibility-ready options in search results
  3. Select the accessibility-ready feature filter by default in the theme browser (forcing users to opt out of browsing these themes)
  4. Require all new themes to meet accessibility-ready requirements

With a gradual progression toward an accessibility-ready mandate, the WordPress.org directory can drastically improve the usability of the web.