Twenty Twenty-One: RSS widget has empty link (feed icon)

[sabernhardt]

Instead of hiding the RSS icon link, the image inside the link was hidden. So that results in an empty link.

.widget_rss a.rsswidget .rss-widget-icon {
	display: none;
}

Steps to discover:

1. Create an RSS widget, with the Twenty Twenty-One theme active.
2. Visit a page with that widget in a sidebar.
3. Use the tab key to navigate to each link on the page.
4. When you arrive at the RSS widget heading, the first link is invisible but clickable.

If using a screen reader, the speech output is unreliable:

Edge/NVDA - "feed link heading level 2"
Firefox/NVDA - "blank"
Edge/Narrator - "link"
Firefox/Narrator - "link"

[sabernhardt]

tabbing through the links, the feed link is invisible

[sabernhardt]

highlighting the empty link

[sabernhardt]

CSS option (same as Twenty Twenty)

[sabernhardt]

I'd prefer removing the link entirely (see #52224), but the CSS patch would hide the link the same way that Twenty Twenty does:

.widget_rss .widget-title a.rsswidget:first-of-type {
	display: none;
}

[sabernhardt]

option 2: using proposed filter

[sabernhardt]

For testing the filter patch, the instructions are on ticket:52224#comment:14 (it requires the patch there, too).

[sabernhardt]

The filter was added in r52031, so testing 52880.filter.patch​ does not require an additional patch anymore.

@Boniu91 wrote a test report on ticket:52224#comment:25, though testing again after the other commit could be a good idea.

Simplified testing instructions

1. Before applying the patch, install and activate the Classic Widgets plugin.
2. Activate the Twenty Twenty-One theme.
3. Go to Appearance > Widgets (or Customize > Widgets). Verify there are no error messages in the widget editor. (To see errors, you may need WP_DEBUG to be true in your wp-config.php.)
4. Add at least one RSS widget, with any combination of settings, to the most prominent sidebar area.
5. Visit the site (front end), view source code, and record the current markup for the widget title (h2 heading). The heading would contain two links, one with an rss-widget-feed class and the other with rss-widget-title.
6. Apply the latest patch. Clear any browser cache or open a different browser to compare both side-by-side.
7. Visit the site and verify there are no errors on the front end. The entire widget should still appear the same.
8. View source code and record the updated markup for the widget title (h2 heading). It should only have the rss-widget-title link now.

[poena]

Tested with trunk at 5.9-alpha-51272.
The patch still works well, the link with the icon is removed, leaving the widget title.
Thank you for the patch and detailed instructions.

[audrasjb]

Self-assigning for commit.

[audrasjb]

In 52191:

Twenty Twenty-One: Remove RSS feed widget icon link.

Use the rss_widget_feed_link filter to disable the output of the icon on RSS feed widgets in Twenty Twenty-One. Improves accessibility by preventing invisible links.

Props sabernhardt, poena.
Fixes #52880.

[sabernhardt]

Bundled themes update note:
​https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/01/05/bundled-theme-updates-with-wordpress-5-9/