Consider removing the "Disable the visual editor when writing" option

[mark-k]

Is anyone even uses it? considering the lack of love the text editor gets I truly hope that the answer is no.

[SergeyBiryukov]

#34682 was marked as a duplicate.

[joedolson]

Speaking personally, I use this option all the time.

Speaking as a member of the accessibility team, there are a lot of problems in the visual editor for various types of disabilities, so for some people with disabilities the simplicity of the text editor makes the writing process much simpler. While it's true that users can disable this for themselves, having it completely disabled at the user level helps make certain that they won't have to repeat that action later.

The accessibility team will probably need to discuss this; it may be reasonable to remove, since it's not the only way to deal with that issue, but it'll need discussion and possibly some feedback from users with disabilities.

[mark-k]

Replying to joedolson:

Speaking personally, I use this option all the time.

Speaking as a member of the accessibility team, there are a lot of problems in the visual editor for various types of disabilities, so for some people with disabilities the simplicity of the text editor makes the writing process much simpler. While it's true that users can disable this for themselves, having it completely disabled at the user level helps make certain that they won't have to repeat that action later.

Maybe I miss something. Removing this UI do not change anything in the editor, you are still able yo switch from the visual editor to the text one. The only UX impact is that you will still have the visual tab in the editor, but there is nothing that forces you to use it and the default is always the last one you used.

[joedolson]

For clarity, I didn't say that I think this is definitely a problem; I said that I think it needs to be looked at by the accessibility team and raised with users with disabilities. We have to make absolutely certain that the controls to switch between the visual and text editors don't have any accessibility issues.

[mark-k]

I realy hope they are no accessibility issues in switching the tabs in general, as in my age my eyesight is not getting better ;)

[pento]

Assuming there are no blocking issues with accessibility, I agree that this option can go away. It's probably a bit late for 4.4, though. :-)

[iseulde]

@joedolson any updates? Anyone against it?

[joedolson]

Will follow up with the a11y team in our meeting Monday.

[joedolson]

The biggest problem right now is that the tab sequence in the post editor is confusing, which makes it harder to switch between the visual and HTML editors. The fact that the options are between the editor and the title field, but are skipped when tabbing from title to post editor makes them difficult for a user to intuitively locate from the keyboard.

In cooperation with some movement on reorganizing the editor and post process per @michaelarestad's post ​https://make.wordpress.org/design/2016/01/11/improving-post-new/, this would be more desirable.

There's no opposition to removing this from the user settings, other than that it's confusing to find this control in the post editor from a screenreader + keyboard.

[chriscct7]

Should this be punted until the keyboard accessibility for switching between editors can be improved?

[afercia]

Replying to chriscct7:

Should this be punted until the keyboard accessibility for switching between editors can be improved?

Yes. :)

[iseulde]

Might be worth removing now with the merge of the block editor?

[afercia]

Will propose to discuss this later today during the accessibility team meeting, but I don't think this should be removed.

[afercia]

Discussed during today's accessibility meeting. Agreed that, before removing this option, the "tabs" in the post edit screen to switch editor's mode should be made easily discoverable. Currently, they're "skipped" when tabbing with the keyboard. There's some JS that moves focus from the post title to the post content. That should be removed first so the tabs are in the natural tab order.