I released a brand-new WordPress plug-in today, targeted specifically at improving accessibility issues. There’s only so much you can do via a plug-in when it comes to site accessibility — most of what grants accessibility for a WordPress site is in the theme. However, that doesn’t mean that you can’t do anything.

This plug-in is designed to help shoehorn some accessibility improvements into themes that need a bit of help. It can do a fair amount, and every feature can be disabled or enabled as needed for a specific theme.

The plug-in is new, so forgive me for any errors — either in judgement or in execution — but here’s what it can do so far:

  • Remove redundant title attributes from page lists, category lists, and archive menus.
  • Enable skip links with WebKit support by enqueuing JavaScript support for moving keyboard focus.
  • Add skip links with user-defined targets.
  • Add language and text direction attributes to your HTML (HyperText Markup Language) attribute
  • Remove the target attribute from links.
  • Force a search page error when a search is made with an empty text string.
  • Remove tabindex from elements that are focusable.
  • Strip title attributes from images inserted into content.
  • Add post titles to standard “read more” links.

Many of these are tasks that have been performed by a diversity of plug-ins or have been known as customizations to WordPress over the years, but many of these plug-ins have not been updated for a long time. I’ve centralized several valuable accessibility improvements into one plug-in, to hopefully increase the ease of implementation and ability to find what you need!

At the moment, the plug-in is focused on front-end issues, and does not currently include any administrative improvements.

Download WP Accessibility now and give it a try!