About the accessibility-ready program

The WordPress theme directory lets you filter themes by the accessibility-ready topic, which marks themes that have been manually reviewed against a set of minimum accessibility requirements. Theme developers can add this tag to their theme to indicate the theme meets these requirements.

For users

How to find a theme that cares about web accessibility? In the WordPress theme directory you can filter themes by Features, one feature is accessibility-ready.

Accessibility-ready themes have been manually reviewed for the accessibility-ready requirements.

Please note: “Accessibility Ready” doesn’t mean the theme meets all WCAG level AA guidelines. It means that the theme reaches the minimum standards that the theme review team has set. The WCAG guidelines are also measurements of content accessibility that cannot be applied to a theme.

Find more information about the benefits of accessibility-ready themes and how to find them on Accessibility-ready WordPress themes.

For theme developers

As a theme deveoper you can add accessibility-ready to the theme tags (Tags) in the style.css file to indicate that it meets accessibility-ready requirements. Next to the regular theme review, your theme will then also be reviewed against the accessibility-ready requirements before it is approved to be listed in the WordPress theme directory.

The WordPress theme handbook describes the process for requesting a review in How to be “Accessibility Ready”.

Detailed testing instructions for each requirement can be found in the Set up testing for the WordPress themes accessibility-ready program.

Help wanted

Each theme submitted with the ‘accessibility-ready’ tag is reviewed manually for the accessibility-ready requirements. As this takes time, we are looking for volunteers to help with the testing.

Join the #accessibility-testing channel in Making WordPress Slack to get in touch with the Accessibility team and ask how you can help best.

The testing process is documented in Set up testing for the WordPress themes accessibility-ready program.