Ri

Ri

@riyana.dev

🧑‍💻 Software Engineer ⚛️ 5 years of composable commerce 🛠️ Next.js / TypeScript / Node.js ✍️ writes @rage.riyana.dev 🌐 site riyana.dev 🇵🇭🏳️‍🌈

24 followers85 following37 posts

Ri reposted

Robert Kingett
@weirdwriter.caneandable.social.ap.brid.gy

An Open Letter to Matt Mullenweg on Accessibility in WordPress https://blindaccessjournal.com/2026/10/an-open-letter-to-matt-mullenweg-on-accessibility-in-wordpress/ #Wordpress

blindaccessjournal.comAn Open Letter to Matt Mullenweg on Accessibility in WordPressOctober 18, 2026 Dear Mr. Mullenweg, I am writing to you publicly as a blind daily screen reader user, an IAAP Certified Professional in Web Accessibility (CPWA), and the publisher of Blind Access Journal. Many of our readers, and many of my professional colleagues, are authors, creators, publishers, developers and site owners with disabilities who rely on WordPress every day. I am choosing to make this letter public because the decisions at issue were made in public, they affect a very large community of people, and that community deserves to hear your answers directly. My concern is your recent action on WordPress Trac ticket #50486, “Improve the admin notices accessibility”, and what it signals about the future of accessibility in WordPress. ### What the Ticket Was Meant to Fix Ticket #50486 was opened in 2020 to address a basic barrier. Admin notices in WordPress carry no semantics that identify them to assistive technology. When a notice appears, a screen reader user is not told about it, and a keyboard user has no way to move directly to it. In practice, people like me can miss confirmations, warnings and errors that sighted users see at a glance. The ticket was postponed through many release cycles. Earlier this month, a modest fix was finally committed. It placed notices in a navigable landmark and added a notice count to the page title, which is the first thing a screen reader announces when a page loads. After six years, it represented real progress. ### What Happened Next The change surfaced legitimate technical problems, including notice counts appearing on the Dashboard and in the block editor when no notices were visible, and contributors were actively working through fixes. Refining or reverting an imperfect change is a normal part of software development, and the revert commit that followed explained its technical reasoning clearly. My concern is not that the work was revised. My concern is how the decision was made and what accompanied it. Your first comment on this six-year-old accessibility ticket was an instruction to revert all of the work. In the same comment, you told Andrea Fercia that he no longer holds any WordPress.org positions or authority and was “invited to contribute your talents to another project.” No technical reasoning was offered on the ticket. As reported by The Repository on October 16, you later said in WordPress Slack that you were simply no longer interested in his contributions. I acknowledge that you also apologized for the temporary locking of his account and said that was not your intent. Mr. Fercia has contributed to 33 WordPress releases, has been a core committer for a decade, and is one of the most experienced accessibility specialists the project has had. Removing him in this way, on an accessibility ticket and in the middle of active collaboration on that ticket, sends an unmistakable signal to disabled users and to the people who advocate for us. ### A Pattern That Concerns Our Community This does not stand alone. In August, you declared that the Accessibility Team had overstepped its authority, usefulness and charter, and that any other team or committer could override its suggestions. In 2025, you proposed developing accessibility improvements as a canonical plugin rather than in core. Taken together, these actions make it difficult for disabled users to know whether accessibility remains a core value of WordPress or is now treated as an obstacle to progress. Accessibility cannot be optional for the people who need it. When it lives outside core, or depends on the standing of individual advocates, people with disabilities are the ones left behind. The effect on contributors matters too. Several respected members of the WordPress community have said publicly that they feel unable to speak freely about these events. A project that depends on volunteer and sponsored contributions cannot build accessible software if the people doing that work fear the consequences of doing it. ### Important Questions In the spirit of openness that the WordPress project has long championed, I respectfully ask you to answer the following questions publicly: 1. Do you consider accessibility a core requirement of WordPress, on equal footing with performance, security and usability, rather than an optional enhancement? 2. What is your plan, and the expected timeline, for making admin notices perceivable and navigable for screen reader and keyboard users, now that the work on ticket #50486 has been moved to a future release? 3. What authority and role will the Accessibility Team hold going forward, and how will its expertise be incorporated into decisions that affect disabled users? 4. What process and criteria were applied in removing Andrea Fercia’s roles, and what process will govern similar decisions in the future, consistent with the project’s Code of Conduct? 5. What commitment can you make to authors, creators, developers and site owners with disabilities that the tools they depend on will remain accessible to them? ### An Invitation to Respond WordPress powers a large share of the web, and its choices shape what millions of people, including millions of people with disabilities, can read, publish and build. Clear answers would go a long way toward restoring trust. Should you choose to respond, Blind Access Journal will publish your response in full and without edits, so our readers can hear directly from you. To our readers, and to everyone in the WordPress community who shares these concerns: I encourage you to read The Repository’s reporting and the ticket history for yourselves, and to add your voice respectfully and constructively. Sincerely, Darrell Hilliker, CPWA Publisher, Blind Access Journal

Ri reposted

Sarah Drasner
@sarahedo.bsky.social

Let's talk a little more about Margaret Hamilton because she deserves it In 1961, Margaret Hamilton was tackling massive systems, having previously wrangled room-sized computers that blared like a foghorn whenever they crashed.

Ri reposted

Jason Koebler
@jasonkoebler.bsky.social

New: I pulled the Character ai bankruptcy documents. They show: - They were spending $14 million/month on compute alone at a time their revenue was around ~$1 million/month - Currently losing $9 million a month - They admitted they enshittified & that it didnt work www.404media.co/character-ai...

404media.coCharacter.ai's Bankruptcy Documents Show the Economics of AI Don't WorkCharacter.ai enshittified its product but was still burning tons of cash, its bankruptcy documents say.
Ri
@riyana.dev

kinda trippy how every minute of my existence is costing me money

Ri reposted

Rage
@rage.riyana.dev

Here’s 5 Things I Read This Week (09/27 - 10/03) (1) hopes+dreams? no, but survival? yes (2) the 1st and only Filipino emperor (3) how social media affects children’s desires (4) the high-interest dopamine loan from doomscrolling + how to pay it off (5) why smartphones kinda bad #AmReading 💙📚

riyana.dev5 Things I Read This WeekWeek 09/27 - 10/03

Ri reposted

Damien: Omen II the Joy Fantastic
@mrmunchertoyou.bsky.social

Just so I'm clear on this, computer memory has tripled in price because a bunch of it that hasn't been produced yet has been ordered to populate GPUs that aren't installed in data centers that aren't built yet in order to service a demand that doesn't exist to make profits that don't happen.

Ri
@riyana.dev

oh... i made a boo boo 🤦 and it's such a silly mistake but in my defense i haven't worked on static sites for a long time

Ri
@riyana.dev

now what in the world is happening over there? 🧐

Science Magazine@science.org

Can the new cutting-edge AI models feel pain? They at least behave as if they do, according to a recent study. The work, which has not been peer reviewed, has divided #AI researchers. https://scim.ag/4hHU6BA

Ri
@riyana.dev

we're displacing hundreds of indigenous people to make room for a data center but it's okay because my AI said ouchie

Ri
@riyana.dev

do companies still hire frontend specialists or is that no longer a viable role anymore

Ri
@riyana.dev

trying out @bookhive.buzz and seeing if i can finally move on from goodreads, i doubt i can completely move away from it without jailbreaking my kindle but i'll cross that bridge when i get there ig

Ri
@riyana.dev

"nobody can digest knowledge at the speed we’re now producing it. we need time to assimilate things. we’re humans." 💯

~paul@paulvall.dev

understanding is the one part of software that still runs at human speed. that's not a bottleneck. that's where we're still needed. i wrote about why open source gets to choose its own pace.

paulvall.devwe need time to assimilatethe reason behind one sort function got lost in a rewrite, and a tarball came out nine times bigger. on comprehension debt, peter naur, and why open source should slow down.

Ri reposted

WIRED
@wired.com

WIRED asked 634 women what they really think about working in tech. They told us about harassment, bias, unequal treatment, and the everyday indignities that still shape life in the industry. 🔗 www.wired.com/story/women-...

Ri
@riyana.dev

one thing i really despise about my current smartphone (a huawei p70) is that brightness gets set back to "automatic" every time it restarts, and so far i have not found a way to make my preferred setting to persist... why must you behave this way you unruly machine?

Ri reposted

Anil Dash
@anildash.com

Replying to @tomlynch.bsky.social

David Heinemeier Hansson called for the extermination of Romani people, comparing them to animals. An entire roster of tech tycoons responded by each personally giving him $1 million for his open source software project, even though he’s already wealthy enough to have a personal race car team.

Ri
@riyana.dev

it's been so long since i've coded in C# and coming from a typescript background type casting looks so strange:

Ri
@riyana.dev

on why latest tech doesn't always excite me 🤷 we are living in some truly dark times, and i get why people choose to migrate

Ri
@riyana.dev

open access?

The Observer@theobserveruk.bsky.social

In defence of AI slop: we should embrace open access to creativity, not condemn it Look past the Donald Trump superhero memes and the new software gives us the chance to democratise creative production. No wonder art’s cultural gatekeepers are worried ✍️ Jack Riley https://bit.ly/3SpzFQ4

bit.lyIn defence of AI slop: we should embrace open access to c...Look past the Donald Trump superhero memes and the new software gives us the chance to democratise creative production. No wonder art’s cultural gatekeepers are worried

Ri reposted

tierney cyren
@bnb.im

“coding is largely solved” okay make a new cross platform web browser that supports every web platform spec to 100% compliance