Pains using a screen reader and Gutenberg to develop a web site

Volunteering for a friend of mine that has a non-profit group who are puppy raisers for a dog guide school, had asked if I could assist with the groups web site.

I decided to go all in and use WordPress out–of -the-box with 5.4 and the twenty-twenty theme and the Gutenberg editor. So far, I have been making slow progress being blind utilizing JAWS 2020 as my screen reader, Latest version of Firefox, and only my keyboard.

I have so far created four pages, and the main navigation menu on the home page,, with a little bit of effort to accomplish these tasks.

Where I ran into a problem, was that it took me about 1 1/2 hours just to figure out how to use the block editor to create a simple list of three items, and making each list item it’s own respective link.

Here is what I had to do to finally accomplish getting the list done and functional.

I had to first choose the block list for creating a new bulleted or numbered list. Then with the keyboard, on the first item make sure the cursor was after the bullet by pressing the end key, then typing the text for the first item. Then press enter for the second item, which puts the cursor to the left of the bullet, so pressing end puts the cursor in the proper spot to begin typing. I had to then repeat these steps to manage the third item in my list.

At this point I selected the text of the first item,and pressed control + K to insert a link. A dialog comes up and wants a URL, so I typed the URL and was informed that one item was found and I could press enter to insert into my list. I then attempted to repeat for the second list item, and found that it had copied the URL from the first item to the second item.

What I finally figured out was to update the page, then select the text for the second item and then press control + K to insert the second link, and then update the page again. Then I repeated this process for the third item to create its link.

By this time I was bitching and complaining so much that my girl-friend was laughing her ass off.

I sure as hell hope that sighted people that can use a mouse is having an easier time of it,because the idiots that is pushing the Gutenberg project forward without an accessibility policy in place is asking for a major problem the further along this project grows.