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Opened 4 years ago

Closed 3 weeks ago

Last modified 3 weeks ago

#47125 closed defect (bug) (fixed)

Admin: clarify the "Add New" links for better accessibility

Reported by: afercia's profile afercia Owned by: joedolson's profile joedolson
Milestone: 6.4 Priority: normal
Severity: normal Version:
Component: Administration Keywords: has-screenshots has-patch needs-dev-note commit
Focuses: ui, accessibility, administration Cc:

Description

In the admin menu and in some of the admin pages, various links use "Add New" as link text. While these links are clarified by the visual context, they are not so meaningful when read out of context.

Assistive technologies provide tools to list all the links in a page and dedicated keyboard shortcuts to navigate through links. In this scenario, a link that only says "Add New" isn't sufficiently clear: users won't have a clue what the purpose and destination of the link is.

One more scenario: users who use speech input software (e.g. Dragon) will voice a command like "Click add new". However, in a standard WordPress page there are at least 5 "Add New" links. The software will display choices to users (usually by displaying numbers close to all the links that it has identified as "Add New"). Then, users will have to:

  • visually identify on the screen the highlighted links
  • voice an additional command, e.g. "Choose 3"

This makes the process inefficient and time consuming.

Ideally, all these links should be self-explanatory and provide more context by adding the "what" new is in the text link. For example:

  • Add New Post
  • Add New Media
  • Add New Page
  • Add New Plugin
  • Add New User

Attachments (8)

add new.jpg (118.8 KB) - added by afercia 4 years ago.
VoiceOver links list
47125-patch.diff (25.3 KB) - added by gonzomir 4 years ago.
47125-patch.2.diff (6.3 KB) - added by alexstine 5 weeks ago.
Refresh.
47125-patch.3.diff (6.3 KB) - added by alexstine 4 weeks ago.
Change _x() to ().
add new.png (225.3 KB) - added by afercia 4 weeks ago.
47125-patch.4.diff (24.4 KB) - added by alexstine 4 weeks ago.
More replacements.
47125-patch.5.diff (24.4 KB) - added by alexstine 4 weeks ago.
Doc block improvement.
47125.6.diff (24.7 KB) - added by joedolson 3 weeks ago.
Remove translators comments & restore textdomain arg

Download all attachments as: .zip

Change History (29)

@afercia
4 years ago

VoiceOver links list

#1 @afercia
4 years ago

  • Keywords has-screenshots added

In the screenshot above, the VoiceOver links list showing some of the "Add New" links.

As mentioned previously, this applies also to the "Add New" links within the various pages, e.g. in wp-admin/edit.php and also the ones on multisite.

Related: #47124 and #47012.

This ticket was mentioned in Slack in #accessibility by afercia. View the logs.


4 years ago

#3 @afercia
4 years ago

  • Milestone changed from Awaiting Review to Future Release

Discussed during today's accessibility bug scrub and agreed this is something that should be addressed, especially for speech recognition software users.

@gonzomir
4 years ago

#4 @gonzomir
4 years ago

I've submitted a patch that updates all "Add New" links (that I could find in the source) together with "Add Existing" links for users and some comments, theme readmes that reference these links. I'm not sure though that my approach for the post types "Add New" menu items is the best one.

#5 @afercia
4 years ago

  • Keywords has-patch added

#6 @joedolson
5 weeks ago

  • Owner set to joedolson
  • Status changed from new to accepted

@alexstine
5 weeks ago

Refresh.

#7 @alexstine
5 weeks ago

  • Focuses administration added
  • Keywords needs-testing added
  • Milestone changed from Future Release to 6.4

#8 @afercia
4 weeks ago

Just noting that if this proposed change gets approved we could consider to not use the _x() translation function any longer. Specifying the context would be pointless as the new strings are already in context. For example:

_x( 'Add New Link', 'link' )

The provided context 'link' is not necessary, as the string is already clear enough.

__( 'Add New Link' )

would be simpler and cleaner.

@alexstine
4 weeks ago

Change _x() to ().

#9 @alexstine
4 weeks ago

Last edited 4 weeks ago by sabernhardt (previous) (diff)

#10 @afercia
4 weeks ago

  • Keywords needs-refresh needs-design-feedback added; needs-testing removed

Thanks for updating the patch. While testing, I noticed there are still around 30 occurrences of 'Add New' in the codebase that would need to be checked. A few of them are in comments or help text but they should be updated as well.

Also, making the search case sensitive I found a couple places where the letter 'n' of the word 'new' is lowercase:

__( 'Add new Pattern' )
_e( 'Add new Comment' )

This is inconsistent with the well established pattern in WordPress, where all similar strings use title case for the word 'New', for example:

__( 'Add New Template' )

'Add new Pattern' was recently Introduced in [56030]

Adding a screenshot to illustrate some examples of what the current patch does.

Last edited 4 weeks ago by afercia (previous) (diff)

@afercia
4 weeks ago

#11 @afercia
4 weeks ago

Related GitHub issue on the Gutenberg repository: https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/53984

@alexstine
4 weeks ago

More replacements.

#12 @alexstine
4 weeks ago

  • Keywords needs-refresh removed

Probably not perfect, but I think this moves us closer.

https://core.trac.wordpress.org/attachment/ticket/47125/47125-patch.4.diff

Anything I missed this go around @afercia?

Thanks.

This ticket was mentioned in Slack in #core by marybaum. View the logs.


4 weeks ago

#14 @marybaum
4 weeks ago

Love this! @afercia would you review the design so this ticket could land in 6.4?

Last edited 3 weeks ago by joedolson (previous) (diff)

#15 @swissspidy
4 weeks ago

Looking at 47125-patch.4.diff, I'd slightly adjust the change to the docblock of get_post_type_labels()

Right now it says "Default is 'Add New Type' for both hierarchical and non-hierarchical types." and "matching your post type. Example: __( 'Add New Type' );."

I would change this to "Default is 'Add New Post' / 'Add New Page'" and "matching your post type. Example: __( 'Add New Product' );.", respectively.

Also, that change warrants a mentioned in a dev-note somewhere so developers update labels in their plugins.

@alexstine
4 weeks ago

Doc block improvement.

#17 @joedolson
3 weeks ago

Removed a few translator comments that are no longer needed with the removal of _x() calls. Also restored the 'textdomain' argument in the get_post_type_labels() docblock, as that is still an important instruction for extenders.

Last edited 3 weeks ago by joedolson (previous) (diff)

@joedolson
3 weeks ago

Remove translators comments & restore textdomain arg

#18 @joedolson
3 weeks ago

  • Keywords commit added; needs-design-feedback removed

I'm don't see that this requires design feedback. These are all text changes. I don't see anything design wise that requires comment.

I'm marking this for commit. There may be further strings that would merit changing, but I don't think those should stop this from getting resolved; we can always add follow-up commits. I searched the code and there's nothing obvious remaining.

#20 @joedolson
3 weeks ago

  • Resolution set to fixed
  • Status changed from accepted to closed

In 56515:

Administration: Add improved context for add new links.

Consistently expand Add New links to include the type of content to add. Improve consistency of text casing to use initial caps throughout.

Props afercia, gonzomir, alexstine, swissspidy, joedolson.
Fixes #47125.

#21 @SergeyBiryukov
3 weeks ago

In 56519:

Docs: Add a @since note for add_new labels change in get_post_type_labels().

Includes removing an obsolete recommendation to use a gettext context matching the post type for disambiguation, which would be redundant with the new labels, as they already include the type of content.

Follow-up [14571], [56515].

See #47125.

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