We have a clarification for the item we reported last week regarding accessibility issues people were having with some recent changes to WordPress.com. We linked to a post where Deborah Edwards-Onoro explained how to enable the Classic Editor for WordPress.com sites. Then we noted a communication from Automattic‘s public relations team about a blog post they had published about these changes.
What we missed is how — according to the publish dates on both Deborah’s and Automattic’s posts — the announcement from Automattic came a day after Deborah’s post. I want to take a moment to apologize to Deborah if it seemed that the official blog post announcement existed at the time of her post. Apparently, it didn’t, so she and other people reacting to the changes at WP.com didn’t miss it. After closer examination, the official announcement (at least on the blog) came the following day, and this seems to have happened after the changes impacting accessibility had already gone live.
I have been told there was an announcement in the WP.com app as well, but for an announcement to go up on a blog a day after the changes it concerns had already been live would explain the confusion.
As I mentioned last week this does prove that a significant need exists for the Classic Editor, including those who need a more accessible tool than the block editor if a delay of only one day is disruptive to them.
