Skip to content

Adam Greenwell

Getting Started With Open Accessibility

Requirements

  • WordPress 5.2 or newer. Tested up to WordPress 7.1.
  • PHP 7.4 or newer. Verified on PHP 8.4 and PHP 8.5.

Installation

  1. Upload the open-accessibility folder to /wp-content/plugins/.
  2. Activate the plugin from the WordPress Plugins screen.
  3. Open the Accessibility admin menu.
  4. Configure widget position, enabled tools, colors, and statement links across the General, Design, Position, Features, Statement, Links, and Advanced tabs.

First Configuration Pass

Start with the default widget enabled, then confirm it appears on the front end. Test keyboard focus, the toggle button, contrast options, text-size controls, and the reset action before rolling changes out across a production site.

After installing or updating to 1.4.01, test at least these views:

  1. Home page.
  2. Single post or article page.
  3. Category or archive page.
  4. A mobile viewport.

On each view, open the widget and check:

  • Text size increase and decrease.
  • Line height increase and decrease.
  • Link underlining.
  • Hide images.
  • Reading guide.
  • Reading mask.
  • Focus outline.
  • Skip to content, confirming keyboard focus lands on the main content.
  • Each contrast mode, confirming the widget stays reachable while a mode is active.
  • Reset.

The most important thing to watch for is layout breakage. Navigation, sidebars, widgets, ads, and code blocks should not balloon just because a visitor increases text size. If a specific theme component needs help, use the integration attributes or filters in Theme And Developer Integration.

Theme Integration Basics

Most sites can use the default targeting behavior. If your theme has custom article wrappers or layout components, start with the small HTML attributes:

<main data-oa-root>
	<article class="story-card" data-oa-target="readable_text headings" data-oa-relax-layout>
		<h2>Story title</h2>
		<p>Readable story text.</p>
	</article>
	<aside data-oa-ignore>
		This area will not be modified by Open Accessibility target mutations.
	</aside>
</main>

For broader theme rules, use the PHP filters documented in the developer integration guide.

Settings Worth Reviewing After Upgrading

Two settings changed behavior in 1.4.0 and are worth a deliberate decision rather than a default:

  • Usage Logging (Advanced tab) is opt-in and off by default. Turn it on only if you want feature usage recorded.
  • Open Links in Same Tab (Links tab) is off by default because it strips target="_blank" from every link on the site. Enable it if you are addressing WCAG 2.1 SC 3.2.5.

The Links tab also adds optional Help and Feedback links to the widget panel and exposes the Sitemap link, and the Panel Title setting renames the widget heading.