#138 – Isla Waite, Bet Hannon and Ryan Bracey on What to Expect From WP Accessibility Day 2024

Transcription

[00:00:00] Nathan Wrigley: Welcome to the Jukebox podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley.

Jukebox is a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress, the people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case, what to expect from WP Accessibility Day 2024.

If you’d like to subscribe to the podcast, you can do that by searching for WP Tavern in your podcast player of choice, or by going to wptavern.com/feed/podcast. And you can copy that URL into most podcast players.

If you have a topic that you’d like us to feature on the podcast, I’m keen to hear from you and hopefully get you, or your idea, featured on the show. Head to wptavern.com/contact/jukebox, and use the form there.

So on the podcast today, we have Isla Waite, Bet Hannon and Ryan Bracey.

Isla Waite, originally from the UK has lived in Sacramento, California for 17 years. With a background in graphic design and over a decade in website project management, she recently started her own accessible web design business. Three years ago, Isla joined the WordPress accessibility meetup led by Amber Hinds, which also led to her involvement with the WordPress Accessibility Day. She is now a team lead, managing the tech and vendor teams to promote web accessibility.

Bet Hannon has worked with businesses and nonprofits for over 16 years, helping them build WordPress websites, integrate other communication channels, and learn how to use digital marketing tools more effectively. She is the founder and CEO of AccessiCart, a services agency that focuses on accessibility and e-commerce, along with other high user interaction websites. Bet lives in Bend, Oregon and is a co-organizer of the WordPress meetup there.

Ryan Bracey is the director of web development and user experience at Second Melody, a mid-sized branding agency located in New Jersey, which builds custom WordPress websites for clients of all sizes and industries. In this role, Ryan has taken a holistic approach to accessibility within the agency by promoting collaboration between clients and departments alike, to ensure all phases of a project are completed with intention.

During the podcast, we discussed the significance of WordPress Accessibility Day, which is a 24 hour virtual conference running on the ninth to the 10th of October, 2024.

It’s free to attend, and we’ll offer a wealth of resources around the topic of WordPress accessibility. The event will include live captions, ASL interpreters, and professionally created event transcriptions.

It’s being driven by a team of passionate volunteers, and is geared towards making the digital space accessible for all.

We’ll cover the logistical details, including how to register, and the optional donations and sponsorships that can enrich your participation. Our guests share their personal motivations and experiences that fuel their dedication to the accessibility cause.

We also get into the global reach of the event with translation efforts and volunteer opportunities that make WordPress accessibility day 2024 for a truly inclusive initiative.

Isla, Bet and Ryan talk about the challenges and triumphs of advancing web accessibility. The importance of both conformance and compliance, and practical steps you can learn about during the event to make your website more accessible.

Whether you’re a developer, a designer or a content creator, this episode is packed with insights and inspiration to help you contribute to a more accessible web using WordPress.

If you’re interested in making the web a more accessible and inclusive place, this episode is for you.

If you’d like to find out more, you can find all of the links in the show notes by heading to wptavern.com/podcast, where you’ll find all the other episodes as well.

And so without further delay, I bring you Isla Waite, Bet Hannon and Ryan Bracey.

I am joined on the podcast by Isla Waite, Bet Hannon and Ryan Bracey. Welcome to you all.

[00:04:51] Bet Hannon: Great to be here.

[00:04:52] Ryan Bracey: Thank you, yeah.

[00:04:52] Nathan Wrigley: Very, very nice to have you. I can’t actually remember if we’ve had three guests on the podcast before.

A quick hat tip before we begin to Michelle Frechette, who has been instrumental in lining up this podcast episode and wrangling today’s three guests.

In no particular order, I’m just going to go in the list that I’ve got them written down on my screen. Would you mind just doing a very quick one minute introduction, quick bio about who you are? Something relevant to what we’re going to be talking about today, which is the WordPress Accessibility Day 2024. So let’s start with Isla. Could we just have your little bio please?

[00:05:24] Isla Waite: Okay, my name is Isla Waite, I hail from the UK, but I live in Sacramento, California for the last 17 years. I have been in website project management for, gosh, more than a decade. Graphic design was my original life, and before that I was in Britain doing things.

I recently started my own business in accessible websites. I stumbled upon WordPress Accessibility Meetup, run by Amber Hinds, about three years ago. And through that discovered WordPress Accessibility Day and said, yes, I’ll get involved in that. And now I am one of the team leads, I’m the tech and vendors team lead.

[00:05:58] Nathan Wrigley: Very, very nice. Thank you so much for that. Okay, next one on the list is Bet. Bet, would you do the same? Just introduce yourself.

[00:06:05] Bet Hannon: Absolutely. So I’m Bet Hannon, I’m the CEO of AccessiCart. We are an accessibility services agency that focuses on e-commerce and other high user interaction sites. And this is my third go around with WordPress Accessibility Day. I serve on the board of directors, I’m the treasurer, and I am the team lead for finance and sponsors. So I primarily do money things for WordPress Accessibility Day.

[00:06:32] Nathan Wrigley: Okay, thank you so much. And finally, last but by no means least, Ryan.

[00:06:36] Ryan Bracey: Thanks. So yeah, Ryan Bracey, I’m the director of Web Development at Second Melody. We’re a branding studio located here in New Jersey, where I’m also located. Yeah, much like Isla, I stumbled across Accessibility Day through Amber Hind’s Accessibility Meetup. Joined as a volunteer three years ago, been an organiser for the past two years, and this year I am helping out as the team lead for speakers. So, dealing with everything related to talking to speakers, reviewing speakers, making the schedule, with the help from a lot of other people.

[00:07:06] Nathan Wrigley: Thank you very much. I obsess about WordPress, and so it’s not news to me that the WordPress Accessibility Day is a thing, but it occurs to me that maybe a bunch of people listening to this podcast will not have heard of this event before. So, whoever wants to take the question, could you just briefly outline what it is, what the intent is, and maybe, given that it’s coming up very soon, let’s get the date and the URL out there as well, so that people can pause this podcast, go and have a look, and then come back and press play again. So whoever wants to take that, just give us the lowdown, the introduction to when it is, and what it’s all about.

[00:07:39] Ryan Bracey: Yeah. So WordPress Accessibility Day will be held this year, October 9th through 10th. We are a 24 hour conference, that’s why it spans the 9th through the 10th. So there are 24 hour long sessions. You can tune in starting on the 9th, watch all the way throughout the day, the night, into the next day. We are an international conference, a hundred percent virtual, so this is why we’re able to do a 24 hour day.

So no matter where you are in the world, you can find a session that you’re interested in, that works for your schedule, participate how you want to participate. And our main focus here is just WordPress accessibility. So looking at educating and informing people on accessibility within the space, how they can help out, how they can get involved, and hopefully educating some people on things they didn’t know.

[00:08:27] Nathan Wrigley: Nice. Thank you so much. I don’t know about the schedule too much. We can come to that in a moment. I don’t really want to particularly cherry pick out individual speakers, although you may wish to later.

But given the fact that it’s running around the clock, so this 24 hour cycle, has that given you an opportunity to highlight different parts of the world, and raise the profile of different communities?

So, you know, we’ve got three flagship events which span the globe, Asia, Europe, and America. But, you know, there’s communities in Australia, the Philippines, Taiwan, South America, all of these things. Has that been an endeavor? Is that part of the whole 24 hour nature, to raise the profile of different community members throughout the world?

[00:09:04] Isla Waite: Absolutely, yeah. This year in particular, we have grown our marketing department of this nonprofit Accessibility Day, and thank you to Michelle. We are sending out social media, and blogs, and podcasts in all different areas of the world. She’s connected with all kinds of people to make sure stuff is pushed out at appropriate times for different time zones.

We’ve had good responses to those things. So we now have team members coming in from different regions in Australia and Hungary. Speakers from all different places, all around the world. I think this year, as it should be, is better than the last, and next year will be better than this year, and that will keep happening.

[00:09:42] Nathan Wrigley: Bet I think it was, that mentioned that she was a director. And when I hear that word, it immediately summons up some sort of structure in the background, you know, a hierarchy of people and what have you.

A lot of the events that I’ve seen online, I get the impression that it’s a bunch of friends that get together sometimes, and organise an event around a particular theme. But given that there’s directors and things like that, I’m presuming that there’s more going on in the background, a little bit more of a professional nature to it. Perhaps like a, well, we call it in the UK a charity, I think it’s called a nonprofit in North America. But is there some sort of structure in the background like that?

[00:10:16] Bet Hannon: Yes. Intentionally done in 2021, as we were going into 2022, was really thinking about, and one of the things that we, as a community, felt was really important was making sure that our speakers were compensated. All over the world, often people with disabilities are not compensated, and we expect them to do the educational work, but we expect that we want our speakers to be compensated.

So there’s a small stipend that they get, and that was not allowed by the WordPress Foundation. So we explored other options, and we incorporated ourselves as a 501 C3. So we are a nonprofit organisation within the United States. And we exist under the fiscal umbrella, or the kind of oversight, fiscal oversight, of a larger nonprofit called Knowbility, that does a lot of work around education and accessibility awareness.

That gives us the, we have the nonprofit piece, and so we just have three board members, so it’s not huge. And then we have the organising team for the event that has grown quite dramatically. You know, Isla talked about things kind of improving year to year, but this is by far the most organisers and volunteers that we’ve had, in terms of getting things put forward.

And we’ve been able to do some amazing new things. You know, Isla mentioned the marketing efforts that have really stepped up this year. But we’ve also had some folks step forward, not so much related to the day of the event, but to start doing some translation so that we’re able to, you know, all the talks happen in English, but we are wanting to be sure that we’re finding some ways to translate those into Spanish, and French, and other languages that folks are interested in having them appear in, so we can spread the word.

[00:11:56] Isla Waite: Shout out to Joni for all the work she’s done for that.

[00:11:59] Bet Hannon: New translation lead, so that’s been amazing.

[00:12:01] Nathan Wrigley: So a lot of the events that are online in the WordPress space, a lot of them are free to attend, certainly. Some of them are, you know, there’s a gatekeeping aspect to it, it might be financial, it might be the surrender of an email address or something like that. Is there any barrier to participating in this event during the day, or can literally anybody rock up and consume the content that you are creating?

[00:12:23] Isla Waite: I was just commenting that, wouldn’t that be terrible if we put a barrier in the way of people accessing WordPress Accessibility Day?

[00:12:30] Bet Hannon: We’ve worked really hard to make sure that there are no financial barriers for attending this. And so you can come to WordPress Accessibility Day. The only thing you need to do is surrender your email because you need an account to log into the Zoom, to attend the events. You can opt in or out of our mailing list though. So it’s free to attend.

We offer you the option to give a $10 donation. If you want an event t-shirt, you can make a $50 donation. If you want to micro sponsor your company for $150, you can do that. But we have some amazing sponsors that have come in to help us put on the event.

It’s more than just needing a streaming service to be able to do the event, because we’re offering live captions, because we’re talking about technical matters, sometimes that’s an issue, right? We have to have folks that are really skilled at doing those sorts of live captions. We’re offering live ASL interpreters during the event. And then, really quickly after the event, within the next few weeks, there’ll be professional transcriptions done.

As you probably know, when you are doing a transcription of an audio, not a lot of them that are technical get everything right, the AI versions of those. And so having folks that are skilled to do that is a piece of that.

So those things together, having the streaming service, and all those other things to get it all out, our amazing sponsors are helping us to do that in a way that makes it free for people to attend.

[00:13:52] Nathan Wrigley: So if I was to show up and I surrender my email address, it’s going to be taking place through Zoom, and you’ve given some nice options there for some things that you can do to help the cause, if you’d like to buy a T-shirt or what have you.

But if I turn up and I wish to read the captions, I think you mentioned there that you’re going to be having live captions. That implies, although I could be wrong, that you’ve got a human, a person actually transcribing them in real time.

And I think you’re right, the option to do that with technology falls over so quickly with technical terms. And no doubt, a WordPress event, there’s going to be hundreds of words bandied around, which wouldn’t be accurately transcribed, so that’s really nice. So you’ll be able to read those, and I’m guessing that that will be in English.

[00:14:33] Bet Hannon: Yes. Initially, all the presentations and all the captions will be in English.

[00:14:36] Nathan Wrigley: And is that the case for all of the presentations as well? I was to, yeah. So everything throughout the 24 hours is in the English language, and the captions will be in the English language as well, okay.

[00:14:46] Bet Hannon: Right. And our hope is that, you know, our volunteer translators are going to be getting to work fairly quickly, and starting to put those out as they can, right? Again, the translation pieces are all done by volunteers.

[00:14:58] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, okay. So, as soon as the session has ended, you’ve got, in your team of volunteers, there’s a bunch of people who are going to be transcribing those into, well, I’ll just name some languages and you can tell me, things like Spanish, and Italian, and what have you, and Japanese and things like that.

[00:15:11] Bet Hannon: The big focus is Spanish, and then after that French, just in terms of the number of places that those languages are spoken. But we do have volunteers that pop up, for example, you know, there’s some languages in the different regions of India that people have an interest in making sure that the talks are available to their communities, and so folks can step up. And so if you have folks that, you know, I was in an interview earlier today, and someone expressed an interest in translating for Arabic because they want their community to be able to access this information. So if you have a community that you want to volunteer to help translate for, reach out.

[00:15:46] Nathan Wrigley: Bet, where would we reach out to?

[00:15:48] Bet Hannon: So the wpaccessibility.day is the website, and we’ll get you the link for that. And then there’s a volunteer section, and people can volunteer.

[00:15:56] Isla Waite: I think it very much depends on where we can get volunteers from. We have ideal languages that we know are very popular in our part of the world, but we want as many languages as possible. So there’s really no restriction on who might volunteer and from where. And if you can speak another language, then we want you.

[00:16:13] Nathan Wrigley: I’m just going to ask a question one at a time. And, again, we’ll just go in the order of the people that we did before, so I’ll start with Isla. It’s a personal question so you can answer this in any way that you like.

Why have you gone in the direction of accessibility? Given all the interesting things that you can do online, why has accessibility become such a crucial part of your life, such that you are being involved, and giving up probably quite a lot of your time to organise an event like this? So it’ll be the same question, but we’ll begin with Isla.

[00:16:38] Isla Waite: For me, I don’t think it’s any one thing. I think a number of things sort collided at the same time for me in my professional career and private life. Like I said, I’ve been a project manager for more than a decade, with a background in graphic design. Before that I was in the military.

I am a very mission-focused person, and I was finding after a decade that, as much as I love my clients, I have some wonderful clients, I felt like, I need something to dig my heels into, and my fingers, and my brain, that has a bigger impact. And I think a lot of people find that at some point in their career. I just needed to see that I was somehow making a difference. Just little me, you know, little part of it, little butterfly wing situation.

So that was part of it. And then, like I said, I stumbled across the Accessibility Day, Accessibility meetup. I was just intrigued. At that point I was really just learning what accessibility was. I stumbled upon the quote by Tim Berners-Lee, you know, the internet, access for everyone regardless of disability, which is now in my signature block.

And then my father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, which is one of those hidden diseases for a long time. But early on, I watched him struggle on the internet. So he’s, at the time, in his sixties. I was watching over his shoulder, just sort of trying to do something really simple. I was like, huh, this could happen to anybody, it’s not just Alzheimer’s. I’m very interested in the cognitive side of things, as much as the seen disabilities.

Anyway, that all sort of happened at the same time, and I decided, this is a path for me I think. And then just recently, I got involved with IAAP, the International Association of Accessible Professionals, and I just passed my CPAC. So yeah, for me it’s about getting on a path for the rest of my working life, and maybe beyond, where I feel like I’m doing something that my heart is driving.

[00:18:18] Nathan Wrigley: What a lovely answer. That’s great, thank you. Same question to Bet.

[00:18:23] Bet Hannon: Yeah, so I had been around flagship WordCamps and hearing about accessibility a little bit. But in 2016 we had a, one of our clients mentioned they needed help making their site accessible. And so that was when we really, about eight years ago, we really dug into learning about accessibility.

And when our team did that, we realised all of us on the team had people that we knew that were impacted. And we saw the difference it makes in people’s lives, to be able to be independent, and have sense of human dignity in being able to do stuff on the web.

And so much so that we shifted the focus of the agency. So it is what we do, but it’s, my take on it is, I hope we work ourselves out of work. I mean, if we could get to the point where nobody needs help learning how to do accessibility, because it’s just something we all do and know how to do. And so that’s a piece of what drives me to work.

With Accessibility Day, is really just sort of extending that education and finding ways to help people learn and grow, and know how to do accessibility better. Because I think when we know better, we can do better. But to think about building in empathy for different ways of accessing the web. It’s just a huge part of what I want to be about, so this organisation gives me a chance to do that.

[00:19:40] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, another great answer. No pressure at all, Ryan.

[00:19:43] Ryan Bracey: I know, I can’t believe I have to follow those two.

[00:19:46] Nathan Wrigley: Two really powerful messages, so over to you.

[00:19:49] Ryan Bracey: Similar to Bet’s timeline, right around 2016 for me. I’ve been a developer for, gosh, probably over a decade as well. But around that time period, 2016, we had a lot of clients coming to us mentioning accessibility. And up to that point in my career, it hadn’t really been something I knew much about, or given a lot of focus to.

Started really focusing on it because it was a client ask, obviously something I needed to do for work. And as I went down that path of researching, what is this? What do I need to do to be compliant? I stumbled across Amber Hind’s accessibility meetups, started attending those, found this really warm and welcoming community.

And just the whole push behind it, or the movement behind it even of, when you do this work it’s, I mean, yes, at the end of the day, we’re just creating websites, but it’s something so small that, why should we ever create a website that not everyone on earth can access? Meaning, yes, it doesn’t seem like a huge impact overall, in the big scheme of the world, but everyone has the right to be able to do anything anyone else can do. So why not just something as simple as browse the web.

And then as you really dive more into it, you realise a lot of the things you do to help cater to the accessibility crowd, you’re also catering to everybody in the world. So when you make something easy for one person, you make it a lot easier for everybody. So there’s added benefit across the board. It makes your work a lot better, it makes your work more accessible, everyone can participate.

I was also lucky around that time to find WordPress Accessibility Day. So I volunteered as a moderator, I believe I was three years ago. At the same time in my professional life, at my company, we went through massive growth. We had some restructuring, I was promoted to director of the website department. So as part of that role, I was tasked with also becoming more active in the community. So already had spoken at Amber’s Meetup, I was already a little bit of a part of Accessibility Day, so I took a larger role as an organiser. Lucky enough to work at a company that gives me the ability to do those things, and encourages me to do those things.

I think to echo what both Isla and Bet have said, it just really kind of gives meaning to your day, to know that what you’re doing is making someone’s life a little bit easier.

[00:22:08] Nathan Wrigley: That was also a fabulous answer. I think, in the last sentence, you encapsulated it in the one word, meaning. I think maybe that sort of sums it up. It gives some significance to work, which could otherwise be fairly technical and a bit dry. You know, if you’re just building websites all day, every day, I think it would be easy to, I don’t know, maybe you are fascinated by that for its own sake, but it would be easy to lose sight of that.

And everything that you’ve, the three of you have just mentioned, points to a kind of more moral dimension to the work of building a website. I get this intuition, having spoken to many people in the community that you are in, that it seems to be replete with genuinely nice people, which is just lovely. I mean, the WordPress community itself is fairly nice, but then there’s a subset of that community, the WordPress community, the accessibility in WordPress community, which seems to have its own high level of loveliness, for want of a better word.

[00:23:07] Bet Hannon: Well, Ryan kind of touched on that, you know, like finding this warm community. And I think that’s, you know, a lot of us work from home, and serving on this planning, organising team, for me, and I think for others too, is a way that we really connect every week. You know, we’re meeting most of the year, every two weeks. We’re now in the kind of pitched lead up to the event, so we’re meeting every week, and we get a chance to know one another. A lot of us have never met face to face yet, but we’re just a part of each other’s lives in a way that is genuinely warm and supporting, and that’s awesome too.

[00:23:38] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, that’s really nice. If somebody was to be listening to this and decides, you know what, I’m going to show up for the Accessibility Day 2024. Are there parts of the event which enable socialising, for want of a better word, or is it all about the presentations, or do you have, I don’t know, breakout rooms, or some way in which people can facilitate what you’ve just mentioned? You know, this kinda moral aspect, this nice camaraderie that you’ve all got.

[00:24:02] Bet Hannon: If you only log into the Zoom, then you’re just consuming the presentations. But there is a Slack channel that you can get access to, and there will be a lot of chatting going on there. And that’s where you’ll get notified if you win any of the sponsors prizes, and the drawings and those kinds of things. So the Slack channel is the place where you could start to make some connections.

[00:24:24] Nathan Wrigley: So there are opportunities for that. So, dear listener, if you are going to attend then, you never know, you might come out of it with a bunch of new friends as well, which is really nice.

I’m just looking at the website itself, you have the most fabulous URL, by the way. It’s wpaccessibility.day. I mean, it couldn’t be better, that’s just great. Well done for bagging that one. That website itself, I’m presuming had to go onto the microscope quite a lot. Given the nature of the event, it would be somewhat remiss if the website had glaring accessibility errors in it.

I don’t know if any of you three have been involved directly with the website, but I’d be interested in hearing some of the challenges. I think we all know that the idea of a hundred percent accessibility is something a bit off there into the distance, and it may never be achievable in anybody’s timeframe. But, what are some of the things that you’ve really gone out of your way to make as accessible as possible over there?

[00:25:14] Bet Hannon: I want to like give a shout out to Ryan because he designed that website for us.

[00:25:19] Ryan Bracey: Thank you Bet.

[00:25:20] Bet Hannon: It’s awesome. Do you want to talk a little bit about that, Ryan?

[00:25:23] Ryan Bracey: Yeah, absolutely. So as I mentioned, I do work for a branding agency, and as part of my involvement last year with Accessibility Day, we donated our agency resources to the group. There was interest to go through a rebrand, get a new logo, get a new entire branding.

So my wonderful branding designers that I work with, and I’ll give him a shout out, Jay Zawislak, he is our creative director, took this on. He designed the logo, chose the color palette, chose the fonts. And when he went through that exercise, he worked pretty closely with myself, just because I’m a little more versed in accessibility.

But we were really looking at, from step one of coming up with the brand, are these fonts accessible? And accessibility, as you mentioned, there is no a hundred percent, it is a spectrum. What works for one person might not work for another person, and vice versa. But you can look at small things like, if I do a lowercase l, a capital i, the number one, are those glyphs all different? Is the spacing between letters enough that it’s easy to read? Are the characters distinct enough that they’re easy to read?

So even looking at fonts in that way, when we were picking colors, we were comparing all the colors against each other to make sure contrast worked. So wherever text is laid over a color, those have been checked.

We also then took an opportunity to kind of showcase what can be done in an accessible website design. So when I designed it, I worked closely with our other board member, Joe Dolson, who actually started Accessibility Day, and now leads our website team as well, developed the website. And we decided to try to showcase things that can be done to make a site beautiful and accessible, because there is a little bit of a misconception within the design community that accessible design means ugly design, which is not true.

So we even, you’ll notice at the top of the site if you are on it, there is a toggle to go into kind of a dark mode. We really wanted to showcase that this can be done in an accessible way. It honors users’ browser preferences. If you prefer dark, it’s in dark by default. If you prefer light, it’s in light by default. We made sure when you switch it over everything is accessible in that mode as well. So that was done very intentionally too, because dark mode was kind of a big trend last year. So when we did the site, we wanted to show that can be done accessibly as well.

We used a lot of pastel colors. Again, those are often seen as inaccessible. So showing that actually you can have a very colorful site, you can have a soft colorful site in a very accessible way. So a lot of thought went into it. And it was, like I said, kind of used as a showcase piece to say, actually, you can be accessible and beautiful at the same time. You just have to put a little bit more thought into it, but you can have a good product at the end of the day.

[00:28:08] Nathan Wrigley: It’s really nice. I should say, I probably misspoke a little bit, given when this podcast is going to air, the URL that maybe would be more relevant is 2024. So the URL is the numerals 2024.wpaccessibility.day. That will actually get you to the current version of the site. It looks broadly similar, doesn’t it? You know, the design aesthetics, and what have you. But it’s absolutely marvelous. And so thank you for all of the hard work you’ve put in there.

Just out of interest, Ryan, because you’ve been in the weeds with that, how much extra work, if you like, and I know this is a sort slightly contentious question, but if you had built this website, I don’t know, with some kind of page builder technology built inside a WordPress, and you’d had no thought to accessibility at all, against the version that we’re looking at now, how much more time do you actually have to spend on it? Was it a significant overhead, or is it just now muscle memory for you that you can just do it all at the same speed as you would with any website?

[00:29:05] Ryan Bracey: I find there’s actually not a lot of extra work that goes into making something accessible, like I kind of alluded to, it’s just having that thought in your head beforehand. So to kind of draw a design analogy, if you know you’re working with a brand that has a red and black color palette, you know you have to design in red and black. It’s no harder, or easier, or more work, or less work than designing a blue and green website, it’s just a different approach. You have to think about it a little differently.

So accessibility works in the same way, you just go into it knowing, I have to make sure that my fonts are big enough, I have to make sure I’m not pairing fonts, colors, and background colors that no one can see. I have to make sure, if I’m introducing functionality, I’m introducing something that’s well known, it’s being introduced in the right way, I am doing it in a way that’s easy for everyone to use.

[00:29:57] Bet Hannon: It’s really just kind of an additional, thinking about user experience.

[00:30:01] Ryan Bracey: Right. I was going to say, at the risk of sounding controversial, it kind of just is, if you’re good at user experience, you’re good at accessibility.

[00:30:09] Isla Waite: And it gives you boundaries. I know so that many designers flail without some kind of boundaries. And yes, the brand gives you some boundaries but, you know, I was talking to another designer recently, and it’s designed with purpose. That’s how I look at accessibility. Yes, you have a brand, but now you’re designing with a purpose. And going after it like that, everyone just totally is on the same page immediately. As long as the team has an accessible culture, it’s not any different to designing the old way.

[00:30:35] Ryan Bracey: Yeah, it’s essentially just laying out a larger set of design requirements at the beginning of a project.

[00:30:40] Nathan Wrigley: We’re at an interesting time with accessibility because I feel, I’ve said this a few times on this podcast, that if we rewound the clock a decade, then accessibility wasn’t really, it didn’t really have a spotlight on it particularly. But now it really does, almost that it’s the thing of our time. You know, in the year 2024, it really does feel like one of the most talked about subjects.

I think there’s a couple of reasons for that, and the one is the moral dimension that you mentioned, all three of you alluded to that. And actually it felt like that was the dimension for the three of you, you know, the moral aspect to it. And probably behind that a little bit, the community that is behind that moral dimension.

But increasingly, I think there’s going to be a legal dimension as well, where the carrot, if you like, the moral thing, you know, dangle the carrot and hopefully people will come along. That will work for some people, you three being prime examples. But the stick, the legal aspect I think is coming fairly soon. I know that in the European Union, we’re going to have legislation coming around next year, which will make this all the more important.

So attending events like this feels like, really, if you’re not skilled on this, this is the perfect moment to get involved, because at some point somebody might be knocking on the door with some paperwork that you don’t necessarily want to read. That’s not a particularly great reason to do it, but it is a fairly compelling reason. And I don’t know if anybody’s got anything to say about that, about the legal aspect, and the ambulance chasing lawyers and all of that coming up.

[00:32:10] Bet Hannon: The reality is, for a lot of medium and small businesses, they tend to put off a lot of compliance things until they have to. That’s just sort of the way that they are, because of the revenue is just not there to do it often, so that happens. But people do come on board, and try to work at what they are required to do.

And you’re right, we already have that in the US with the serial plaintiff lawsuits. We’re gearing up for the enforcement of the European Accessibility Act. But even in the UK and other places, there are other laws already there that are starting to be more enforced.

And so, yeah, legal compliance is a thing. That is the main topic of our keynote speaker at the event this year in fact. Lainey Feingold is a US attorney who has been instrumental in accessibility law throughout the United States. She got involved with some of the early lawsuits around bank customers who were suing their banks over non-accessible ATMs, primarily blind consumers suing them. And out of that developed a kind of, structured negotiation, bringing together the people who build the ATMs, and the people who are blind who need to use them, and the users.

And so it kind of builds on that user experience that we were talking about before, bringing folks together rather than being antagonistic. I mean, I think people do want to do the right thing. So I don’t know how much of those stories she’ll tell us in her keynote, but she was very, you know, if you’re in the US and you have an ATM with braille on it, Laney was a part of that. She’s going to be talking about the legal landscape for the WordPress community, and I’m really excited about that.

[00:33:52] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, that’s a nice segue Bet actually because, again, the URL 2024.wpaccessibility.day, and then if you add forward slash schedule, to the end of that, you’re going to be able to see what’s going on. And as you said, right at the top of the list is Lainey’s keynote address.

But then underneath that we have all of the different bits and pieces that are rolling out over the following 24 hours, and they’re all clearly labeled, the times that you can see them live, and what have you.

I’m going to put you all on the spot and ask for you to pick one, or maybe two, that you are particularly excited about. Now, caveat emptor, I am not suggesting, even for a moment, that if you pick two, that means the others are in any way, shape, or form, less worthwhile, let’s put it that way. We understand how this works. We can’t mention all of them because we just don’t have the time. But if you find that to be a fair thing to do, I’ll start with, well, let’s go with Isla. Couple that you are particularly excited about, or one, whichever you like.

[00:34:48] Isla Waite: Well, I’m going from my brain, and I’ve only really studied the schedule twice. Once when I was, this is how the process goes, I was eliminating all indication of who these speeches, presentations come from, so that the speaker’s team could go through that, and it was anonymised so there’s no favoritism or anything, so yeah, that’s how it’s done.

So that was my first exposure to, all of the applications of the speakers, which were somewhere in the region of 80 to 100. So the team did an amazing job of getting through all of that, and coming up with the 24, 25 presentations.

I’ve since looked at it once because we’ve been pretty busy. So from the top of my head, I know there is one that focuses on a culture among developers, and that stuff is obviously very, very interesting to me because I work, I guide the team or whoever’s involved in a particular project.

And that involves people who work predominantly with me, and people who work with the organization that we’re helping. It becomes a very molded team of people who need to understand how this all works, and how you’re going to keep doing it going forward.

So I’m always interested on other people’s approaches to that. And I believe that speakers from Hungary, so I’m super excited to hear about that perspective from another country.

[00:35:57] Nathan Wrigley: There’s one right in front of me at the moment which is entitled, Creating a Developer Culture of Accessibility and it’s Jessie Frio, Mark Steadman. So maybe that was the one that you were thinking of. So there we go, we’ve managed to find that one. That’s great. Okay, let’s go to Bet. Same question.

[00:36:12] Bet Hannon: I am, not so much the presentations, I am super excited about hearing Lainey’s keynote. I do a lot of work with folks that are trying to wrestle through all those legal compliance things, and that’s just the nature of what I end up doing with a lot of folks. So I just eat that stuff up, and I really eager to hear from her, she’s a great presenter too.

[00:36:31] Nathan Wrigley: Perfect. So we’ve had a culture one, we’ve had a compliance one. So, yeah, over to you, Ryan, for the last one or two.

[00:36:37] Ryan Bracey: Oh wow. As the speaker lead organiser, I feel like I love all my children. We do have some really interesting topics this year, maybe I’ll answer it that way.

To go off Lainey’s keynote, we do have a few other talks that kind of focus around the legal landscape this year. This was a big push for us to get speakers in that area because it is becoming more prevalent.

We also have some interesting talks that focus around accessibility from a designer aspect, which I think is an oft overlooked topic. I think a lot of times it just falls to the developer, when it’s really something that starts in the beginning.

We do have some interesting culture ones, that talk about how to structure accessibility within your company.

But there is one talk I am actually pretty excited about. It is called, How to Remediate Accessibility Issues in WordPress by Cam Coulter. And I think that one’s going to be very interesting to our audience because he’s talking specifically about how to address issues that pop up in WordPress, which, as WordPress developers, we know is not often a fully hardcoded, self-built system. You’re working with a lot of page builders, plugins, third party developers, software systems. So he’s talking about how to identify those things, and make changes when maybe you don’t have access to that source code.

[00:37:53] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, well, thank you. That was nice, all three of you giving us a very different answer.

If you go to that page though, although it might sound on the face of it that accessibility is a niche, it turns out that niche is really broad. I’ll just go through a few, I’m just looking at the page now. So the one that you just mentioned, Ryan, How to Remediate Accessibility Issues in WordPress.

Then there’s one about agile accessibility, Building Inclusivity into the Product Roadmap. Practical Accessibility Tips for Content Creators. Accessibility Challenges with Single Page Applications. Why can’t I use my brand color there, and if not there, then where? That’s an interesting one. Is your page builder, accessible? Captchas and other gotchas. CSS tiny tips. Insights from a community driven survey. Developing accessible Gutenberg blocks. That one would capture I think.

I’m about halfway down the page and I’ll stop there. But you’ve immediately got the idea that this not one thing, there really is a whole broad church of things to be consuming and getting involved in.

So I know it’s not the three of you entirely, but I think this event is going to be absolutely fabulous. So just quickly, one more time, 2024.wpaccessibility.day. Just before we knock it on the head, as we say in the UK, just before we finish, is there anything that you want to just mention as a way of rounding it off? Something that I failed to ask, something that you think was important say. Let’s go round the houses. Let’s start with Isla.

[00:39:19] Isla Waite: Yeah, I want to tack on a little bit to Bet’s comments about the legal stuff. It’s been a big thing in California recently, and I’m definitely not going to go into the details of that. But, you know, eventually California will sort itself out and there’ll be some kind of law that makes sense.

But something that came up in the draft of that bill was compliance, and somewhere else, I believe the word conformance was used. I’ve studied those words a lot having just done my CPAC. Compliance being a legal thing, conformance being in the spirit of. And with all this talk of laws, and people definitely being worried and, scared and, you know, Bet’s clients and mine as well, oh my gosh, how do I get compliant?

Yes, that is super important and, yes, it’s probably going to be the law. But for everyone else who’s just trying to get on board and figure this out, start with conformance. Start with doing something in the spirit of accessibility. All you have to do is squint at your colors and figure out, can I see them if my eyesight’s not very good? There’s so many places you can start to conform, and work in the spirit of accessibility. And I hope lots of those people come to WordPress Accessibility Day 2024.

[00:40:25] Nathan Wrigley: Nice. Thank you for that final comment, that’s lovely. And, Bet, anything you wanted to add?

[00:40:30] Bet Hannon: Yeah, I think a lot of times, we’ve kind of alluded to it a couple different times, some of the stuff Ryan talked about. A lot times people think accessibility is something very complex, that only specialists can do. And I try to help people understand, you know, start where you’re at, and if you can put alt text on images, and make sure your heading structures are right, and make sure your link texts are there, and work on your color contrast. That’s a lot of accessibility issues, and they don’t necessarily require very much technical knowledge at all, right? Content creators do a lot of that work. And so get started and start learning, but also, the more you educate yourself, the more you can stop creating inaccessible content.

[00:41:11] Nathan Wrigley: Nice. And it feels like this event is perfectly poised for that. Whether you are really deeply into this journey, there’s content here you. But you are the 101 stage, and you just want some tips right at the outset, there’s things here well. Okay, thank you. And, Ryan, rounding us off.

[00:41:25] Ryan Bracey: Yeah. And I just wanted to say, and Nathan, you alluded to this but, as you read our schedule, we do have a little bit for everybody, and we took a really concerted effort to make sure that this wasn’t a fully technical conference. If you’re not a developer, there are going to be talks for you here. If you’ve worked in accessibility for years, there will be talks for you here. If you’ve just heard about accessibility today on this podcast, there are talks for you there.

So as we’ve mentioned, it is free to attend. So if you go to our website, you can register right now. It’s October 9th, block off your calendar. Each session only lasts for 45 minutes. One happens every hour, so you can kind of watch them at your leisure throughout the day. And like I said, we have something for everybody. So no matter what position or role you work in, no matter where you are in your accessibility day journey, you can probably find a talk that is relevant to what you are looking to get out of it.

[00:42:15] Nathan Wrigley: Thank you so much. And playing it forwards a little bit, I would also draw attention to the menu on the URL, which we’ve been mentioning, 2024.wpaccessibility.day. Couple of things, there’s a volunteer menu item, maybe go and check that out if you’re interested in supporting the event going forwards. And also a donate menu item as well if you want to support the endeavors in that way.

That has been a really interesting podcast. If you are new at accessibility, this event is for you. If you’re experienced, this event is for you. And if you would like to possibly make some new friends in a different community, this event is also for you. So it’s got a bit of everything for everybody.

Thank you so much for chatting to me about it today. Thank you, Isla, thank you Bet, and thank you, Ryan. I really appreciate it.

[00:43:03] Bet Hannon: Thanks for having us.

[00:43:04] Ryan Bracey: Yeah, thank you.

On the podcast today we have Isla Waite, Bet Hannon and Ryan Bracey.

Isla Waite, originally from the UK, has lived in Sacramento, California for 17 years. With a background in graphic design and over a decade in website project management, she recently started her own accessible web design business. Three years ago, Isla joined the WordPress Accessibility Meetup, led by Amber Hinds, which has led to her involvement with the WordPress Accessibility Day. She is now a team lead, managing the tech and vendors teams to promote web accessibility.

Bet Hannon has worked with businesses and nonprofits for over 16 years, helping them build WordPress websites, integrate other communication channels, and learn how to use digital marketing tools more effectively. She is the founder & CEO of AccessiCart, a services agency that focuses on accessibility and eCommerce, along with other high user interaction websites. Bet lives in Bend, Oregon, and is a co-organizer of the WordPress Meetup there.

Ryan Bracey is the Director of Web Development & User Experience at Second Melody. A mid sized branding agency located in NJ, which builds custom WordPress websites for clients of all sizes and industries. In this role Ryan has taken a holistic approach to accessibility within the agency by promoting collaboration between clients and departments alike, to ensure all phases of a project are completed with intention.

During the podcast we discuss the significance of WordPress Accessibility Day, which is a 24-hour virtual conference running on 9th to the 10th October, 2024. It’s free to attend and will offer a wealth of resources around the topic of WordPress accessibility. The event will include live captions, ASL interpreters, and professionally created event transcriptions. It’s being driven by a team of passionate volunteers and is geared towards making the digital space accessible for all.

We cover the logistical details, including how to register and the optional donations and sponsorships that can enrich your participation. Our guests share their personal motivations and experiences that fuel their dedication to the accessibility cause. We also get into the global reach of the event, with translation efforts and volunteer opportunities that make WordPress Accessibility Day 2024 a truly inclusive initiative.

Isla, Bet, and Ryan talk about the challenges and triumphs of advancing web accessibility, the importance of both conformance and compliance, and practical steps you can learn about during the event to make your website more accessible. Whether you’re a developer, a designer, or a content creator, this episode is packed with insights and inspiration to help you contribute to a more accessible web using WordPress.

If you’re interested in making the web a more accessible and inclusive place, this episode is for you.

Useful links

WP Accessibility 2024 website

WordPress Accessibility Meetup

AccessiCart website

Second Melody website

Knowbility website

International Association of Accessible Professionals website