July brought a lot of fun functionality-based additions to the theme, as well as some nice usability and accessibility improvements.
Status Update
Here’s a few of the things we’ve completed recently:
- Blocks completed in July:
- UW Story Slider – This is the UW Theme 2.0 replacement for the Image and Content Carousel. It’s been given a design refresh with new features like displaying preview slides so users can see what content is coming next.
- RSS Feed – This is a WordPress Core block that received some small design tweaks for better alignment with the UW brand.
- A new informational page for non-WiscWeb WordPress developers.
- The PNG image that will represent UW Theme 2.0 when a user accesses Appearance > Themes.
- Started on fixes to reduce barriers for users of assistive technology found in round 3 of accessibility testing:
- Removed embed for Airtable as it introduces high accessibility barriers; we recommend users link to Airtable content instead.
- Completed an initial pass at improving accessibility of the UW Tabs block.
- Added better voiceover support for the People plugin search.
- Added an alt text reminder that overlays images while editing a page or post (these do not show on the front-end view of the page).
- An audit of pattern names and updated pattern names and keywords to improve user experience.
- Added Bluesky and Podcast icons to the footer.
- Tested all blocks on mobile in different browsers.
- Styled the Theme Settings page in the WordPress dashboard to help users more easily find the content they need.
We also continued fine-tuning the tooling we’ve built for migrating content from UW Theme Classic to UW Theme 2.0. As a reminder, WiscWeb will be the primary focus for launch (related migration documentation).
In August, our team will be focused on testing full site migrations and fixing bugs with the migration tooling. We’ll also be wrapping up a number of development cleanup tasks in preparation for theme launch.