Consider removing the "Disable the visual editor when writing" option

[mark-k]

Is anyone even uses it? considering the lack of love the text editor gets I truly hope that the answer is no.

[SergeyBiryukov]

#34682 was marked as a duplicate.

[joedolson]

Speaking personally, I use this option all the time.

Speaking as a member of the accessibility team, there are a lot of problems in the visual editor for various types of disabilities, so for some people with disabilities the simplicity of the text editor makes the writing process much simpler. While it's true that users can disable this for themselves, having it completely disabled at the user level helps make certain that they won't have to repeat that action later.

The accessibility team will probably need to discuss this; it may be reasonable to remove, since it's not the only way to deal with that issue, but it'll need discussion and possibly some feedback from users with disabilities.

[mark-k]

Replying to joedolson:

Speaking personally, I use this option all the time.

Speaking as a member of the accessibility team, there are a lot of problems in the visual editor for various types of disabilities, so for some people with disabilities the simplicity of the text editor makes the writing process much simpler. While it's true that users can disable this for themselves, having it completely disabled at the user level helps make certain that they won't have to repeat that action later.

Maybe I miss something. Removing this UI do not change anything in the editor, you are still able yo switch from the visual editor to the text one. The only UX impact is that you will still have the visual tab in the editor, but there is nothing that forces you to use it and the default is always the last one you used.

[joedolson]

For clarity, I didn't say that I think this is definitely a problem; I said that I think it needs to be looked at by the accessibility team and raised with users with disabilities. We have to make absolutely certain that the controls to switch between the visual and text editors don't have any accessibility issues.

[mark-k]

I realy hope they are no accessibility issues in switching the tabs in general, as in my age my eyesight is not getting better ;)

[pento]

Assuming there are no blocking issues with accessibility, I agree that this option can go away. It's probably a bit late for 4.4, though. :-)

[iseulde]

@joedolson any updates? Anyone against it?

[joedolson]

Will follow up with the a11y team in our meeting Monday.

[joedolson]

The biggest problem right now is that the tab sequence in the post editor is confusing, which makes it harder to switch between the visual and HTML editors. The fact that the options are between the editor and the title field, but are skipped when tabbing from title to post editor makes them difficult for a user to intuitively locate from the keyboard.

In cooperation with some movement on reorganizing the editor and post process per @michaelarestad's post ​https://make.wordpress.org/design/2016/01/11/improving-post-new/, this would be more desirable.

There's no opposition to removing this from the user settings, other than that it's confusing to find this control in the post editor from a screenreader + keyboard.

[chriscct7]

Should this be punted until the keyboard accessibility for switching between editors can be improved?

[afercia]

Replying to chriscct7:

Should this be punted until the keyboard accessibility for switching between editors can be improved?

Yes. :)

[iseulde]

Might be worth removing now with the merge of the block editor?

[afercia]

Will propose to discuss this later today during the accessibility team meeting, but I don't think this should be removed.

[afercia]

Discussed during today's accessibility meeting. Agreed that, before removing this option, the "tabs" in the post edit screen to switch editor's mode should be made easily discoverable. Currently, they're "skipped" when tabbing with the keyboard. There's some JS that moves focus from the post title to the post content. That should be removed first so the tabs are in the natural tab order.

[joedolson]

The blocker to this setting removal was resolved in [59188], so I think we can move this forward again.

Now that the ability to switch between editors is more discoverable and in a natural text order, I think this is an option. Removing the setting has no impact on immediate user experience, it just changes the way the setting is configured.

[prasadkarmalkar]

Hello,
I would like to work on this issue. I have a doubt: should we simply remove the input field from user-edit.php, or do we need to remove all dependencies on the rich_editing option as well? There are multiple functions, such as user_can_richedit, that rely on this option, and these functions are used across multiple files.

[joedolson]

@prasadkarmalkar No, we shouldn't remove any of the dependencies; this is *only* about removing the explicit option from user settings. Additionally, we should make it conditional: the setting should still display if it is currently checked, to give people the ability to turn it off, and should be omitted if it is already not enabled.

[prasadkarmalkar]

Thanks @joedolson ! I will start working on this.

In this PR I have added a condition when displaying the option for 'Disable the visual editor when writing' only when the user has already changed it to checked.
Here is the demo of a user already having the option checked.

​https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/64332d1f-00f0-4aac-8543-63d4d979645c

Trac ticket: https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/34681

[prasadkarmalkar]

I have raised PR for this issue. I have added a condition when displaying the option for 'Disable the visual editor when writing' only when the user has already changed it to checked.
PR link - ​https://github.com/WordPress/wordpress-develop/pull/8005

[rcreators]

@joedolson PR tested. Good to Commit.

[joedolson]

In 59695:

Editor: Remove option to disable the visual editor.

Remove the option "Disable the visual editor when writing" from the user profile if it is currently false. If enabled, the option will stay available until disabled.

This was blocked due to issues with tab order and focusability in the classic editor environment until [59188].

Props mark-k, SergeyBiryukov, joedolson, pento, iseulde, chriscct7, afercia, prasadkarmalkar, rcreators, jamieblomerus.
Fixes #34681.

In r59695

[JeffPaul]

Note that the dev note for this is ​drafted and part of the Miscellaneous Dev Note.

[JeffPaul]

This has now been published as a section in the ​Miscellaneous developer changes in WordPress 6.8 dev note post.