2025 WP Accessibility Day

00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to the Underrepresented in Tech podcast where we talk about issues in underrepresentation and have difficult conversations.

Underrepresented in Tech is a free database with the goal of helping people find new opportunities in WordPress and tech.

Hello Taco. Hello June.

[00:00:23] Speaker B: Hello. Good to see you.

[00:00:25] Speaker A: Good to see you. Sama is not here this morning. She is traveling. I am so happy for her. She got to spend some of time with her family here in the US after wordcamp US before heading back to the Netherlands. So she is on a plane this morning somewhere and was sorry to miss this but I told her I got it. I know you guys and I think we’ll be fine but I still had to do the sing song at the beginning so it’s good to have you here. Why don’t I give you a second to introduce yourselves what you do in WordPress and what your role is on WP Accessibility Day. Because that is our topic today. I’m going to start with June 1st.

[00:01:02] Speaker B: Okay, thank you.

My name is June. I’m a marketing consultant with a focus on project management and accessibility.

So what I in a very short nutshell kind of explanation, I take big projects and I help you project manage that so that you are successful in doing your planning from beginning to end. So that’s what I provide for WP Accessibility Day. I am on the sponsorship team and on the marketing team. I co lead the marketing with Michelle and I work with Bet Hannon on the sponsorship side.

So that’s. Yeah, that’s what I do.

[00:01:49] Speaker C: Forget about my last name. It’s impossible. Just Taco works. Usually I work with Progress Planner, a small plugin for WordPress to help people make the most out of their website. So to keep it up to date, keep it relevant after they’ve initially launched it.

That’s a lot of fun. And also an organizer for WordPress Accessibility Day.

First time for me so I’m sort of looking at the rest. Following their lead.

I’m mostly helping out on the volunteers team this year.

[00:02:30] Speaker A: Excellent. And it’s so good to have you both here. Now June is the technically on paper the co lead but I have been so busy this year. She’s been leading and I’ve been co leading name only. So I have to give her mad props for picking up a lot of the slack from my crazy life this year. So June, you’re knocking it out of the ballpark. And Taco, it’s so good to have you on the team this year. Too. So I’m glad you could join us.

[00:02:55] Speaker C: It’s. It’s a lot of fun and it’s way more work than I expected it would be.

[00:03:01] Speaker A: Yes. And we have a big organizing team for a reason, because it is.

[00:03:06] Speaker C: Yeah, that’s, that’s clear. But it only shows when you’re actually in it. From the outside, it. It just runs so smooth and it looks very easy.

[00:03:16] Speaker A: Yes, for sure.

Before we even dig into the whys, the when, all that stuff, like, why don’t we give the when so people will know when it is? So, Taco, I’m going to ask to share that information.

[00:03:28] Speaker C: Yes. So it little bit depends on your time zone, but 15 and 16th of October this year and all the times in our schedule are published in UTC because we do a full 24 hours.

So depending on where in the world you are, it starts a little bit earlier or later in your day.

But 15th, 16th of October, that’s what you have to mark in your calendar.

[00:03:58] Speaker A: October 15th is my birthday. And the best gift anybody could give me is to make their website more accessible for all. Just going to put that out there like that. I don’t need anything else. Just make the web a more accessible place.

And start by attending WP Accessibility Day.

[00:04:16] Speaker B: June.

[00:04:16] Speaker A: This is your second or third year?

[00:04:18] Speaker B: Third year, Second year.

[00:04:20] Speaker A: Second year. Yeah, you and me both. Second year doing this. So tell me a little bit about why it’s important to you to be part of the organizing team for WP Accessibility Day.

[00:04:33] Speaker B: It’s a bit personal, but I had a long hiatus in my career. When I came back three years ago, I was really lost. I didn’t know where to go, where to turn. And somebody said, hey, there’s this free event online. Why don’t you check it out?

So I was like, oh, what is it? And it was Accessibility Day.

So I spent the day watching the event and then checking up on, like past videos. And then that’s where I found like the WordPress accessibility meetup.

And it kind of took me down this road of understanding an elderly parent who had dementia.

And I was just like, oh, this is very enlightening to me. And so when the next year came around and organizing team call for organizers came out, I said, well, let me see if I can offer my help.

And my previous life, I was a project manager and mostly focused on sponsorship.

So I had met Bet through one of the several, you know, online venues. And I reached out to her and I said, hey, I used to do sponsorship and it looks like you could use Some help?

Do I qualify? And she was like, sign up. Get on my team.

So that’s where I started. I started up last year and I started working with BET on a sponsorship, and it just blossomed from there. And it’s become a very important part of my life to be an organizer for wpad. So I’m very happy about that.

[00:06:21] Speaker A: I’m glad you’re here for sure, and not just because we kind of work together on things, and I get more of June than most people do, which makes me happy.

Taco, what. What made you want to be part of WP Accessibility Day’s team?

[00:06:39] Speaker C: So I’ve been around WordPress for quite a while and have seen a lot of different people talk about accessibility.

And especially in WordPress itself, it seems to be something that comes up always after the fact.

And I think last year, the year before WordPress Accessibility Day, I attended and there were a couple of talks that were in the direction how can you, as a project manager, as a stakeholder, make sure that accessibility is at the forefront of doing development? And how can you make sure that your client understands why it’s important, even though they might not?

They might feel they don’t need the accessibility for their business or for their website?

And I like that so much that when I saw the call for organizers this year, I was like, you know what? Let me see if I can help spread that word and that we can make the web a little bit more accessible for everyone.

[00:07:49] Speaker A: I love that.

And I’m an organizer as well, and on this podcast, so I’m kind of straddling both seats. But I will also just kind of put my two cents in. And people have heard me say this before, but as somebody with physical disabilities, when I think about a website being inaccessible, it kind of reminds me of when I show up to a space and there’s no curb cuts, so I can’t really get into a building, or I have to have to wait and ask somebody to open a door for me because there’s no paddle to open the door. Or I get on the first floor and I’m like, oh, I’d love to go upstairs and there’ no elevator. Or the elevator’s too small to accommodate my mobility device. And so those kinds of roadblocks that happen to me in an, you know, in a physically accessible world is similar to what happens to somebody who needs a screen reader and the screen reader won’t work or can’t see the screen contrasting because of contrast issues or poor eyesight or colorblindness. For example. And so I thought if I, you know, if I am arguing that we need a more physically accessible world, it just stands to reason that we need a more web accessible world also. So that’s kind of how I ended up as part of, as part of the team, and happily so, for sure.

[00:09:10] Speaker B: But one of the things that I learned in my accessibility journey is how much I personally depended on features that were originally for accessibility, and I just kind of adopted it into my own world.

Captions is definitely one of them.

I don’t hear as well as I used to.

And so when I’m watching movies, especially movies, because there’s so many ambient noises in movies that I depend on those captions and it was just like, oh, well, isn’t that nice? You know, and it’s. It’s kind of like, oh, wait a second, it’s. It’s necessary, but it’s a nice to have for me, you know, And I.

[00:09:59] Speaker A: Do the same thing.

My favorite, favorite thing to laugh at myself about is what I will say, like birds chirping or like dishes clanking. And I’m like, I didn’t hear the birds, I didn’t hear the dishes.

I could hear most of the dialogue, but I like to be able to read the dialogue too, because I think how my brain processes and because my ears don’t work as well as they used to. But.

But yeah, it’s like there, there were dishes clanking. I. I did not hear that on that show.

And I live in a condo and I don’t want my. I can’t blast my volume because there are neighbors right upstairs and on the other side of the wall. So.

[00:10:36] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.

[00:10:38] Speaker C: And I mean, I’m not a native English speaker, so even English captions help me sometimes, especially when people have a stronger accent or.

Yeah, it’s slightly like you said, ambient noise, stuff like that.

As a non native speaker, it’s harder to sort of fill in those blanks if you miss part of a word or part of a sentence. So it’s super helpful for me as well.

[00:11:05] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely.

[00:11:11] Speaker B: I am a really poor example of a overseas Chinese person.

My Mandarin is not good.

And I learned my Mandarin in college, not as a youth.

So when I was learning Mandarin, a lot of Asian films have captions, and that was really how I, I learned a lot of my character recognition, because that was one way that I could hear and read at the same time.

And yes, it takes us beyond English captions, but it is definitely a way to learn another language.

[00:11:51] Speaker A: Absolutely. I know from duolingo that sometimes just different voices saying a word without being able to see the word at the same time. And I go, what did they say? Because I couldn’t understand that one digital voice over that other digital voice.

Absolutely. Makes a big difference.

What to you is one of the most, let me say, not the most important. They’re all important. What was one of the first things that you learned to do as somebody who was starting to make changes toward a more accessible website?

I know for me it was alt text. The first thing I learned was at least describe the images kind of thing.

[00:12:34] Speaker C: Yeah, that’s one of the things that I still, if I want to tweet fast at a conference, still forget about and get heat for. Because, yeah, I know it’s super important, but in the heat of the moment, I tend to still forget them sometimes. Yeah, but so the first thing that I ran into was actually keyboard accessibility, and that was because Rian Rietfeld, who’s one of the known names in accessibility in WordPress, did a presentation back in the day when I still worked at Yoast for the whole development team, and she showed how hard it is to navigate the average website and the average plugin with just your keyboard. And that was a real eye opener for me.

[00:13:25] Speaker A: Absolutely. Because somebody who can’t see can’t use the mouse the same way or at all. And so having to use the tabs on your keyboard and have the screen use the right hierarchy so that you’re not jumping all over the place so that it makes sense. Absolutely.

[00:13:41] Speaker B: Yep.

[00:13:42] Speaker A: Absolutely. What about you, June?

[00:13:48] Speaker B: I think when I approach website design and more project based, I’m always looking to see how the information flow is.

So I’m very cognizant of more of.

Is the order of information understandable? Does it follow sequentially and does it go from page to page in a sensible manner? It doesn’t. It. You don’t end the page saying, fill out the contact form, but then you go over to a testimonial page or something like that.

[00:14:22] Speaker A: Right.

[00:14:23] Speaker B: So I’m more cognizant of more of a whole journey.

So. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah.

[00:14:32] Speaker A: I used to use the page builder that the default font was, I think, a 10 or 12, and it was in a gray, not. Not black or not dark charcoal, but in a gray. And I’m not gonna shame them, I’m not gonna say who they are out loud. And I don’t know, it might be different now because that’s not the page builder I’m used to anymore, but the first thing I did when I would start to build a site was change the color of the font and change the default size of the font. Because in my 40s, I’m in my 50s now, but in my 40s, I was struggling to see the site I was building.

And all I could think of was if I. If there are people who are not in their 20s with perfect 2020 vision and no colorblindness and all of these other things, then there are other people who will struggle to view this site whether it’s on a phone or on a screen. And so that was also kind of one of those early thought processes. Before I even knew what web accessibility was and that it was a thing, I was already starting to think about how, how could anybody see this page?

[00:15:36] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.

[00:15:37] Speaker A: Or read it, you know, so.

[00:15:39] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. There was one designer that I worked with a long time ago and he was a young man and he was very much into design and he wanted to use those little, little tiny ant size font in gray. And I was just like, I’m not that old, but you can’t do this to me.

[00:15:58] Speaker A: Exactly, exactly.

Oh, my goodness. Well, it’s already September, and so our whole lineup of speakers is.

People can see that. And as Taco said, it’s a 24 hour event, so we have a lot of speakers, which is awesome.

[00:16:17] Speaker B: We sure do.

[00:16:18] Speaker A: And I’m very excited about our keynote speaker. Taco, can you share who our keynote is and a little bit about that?

[00:16:25] Speaker C: Yes, absolutely. So it’s a name that people who have been in UX in Design may recognize.

He’s named Vitaly Friedman and he is, I think, the CEO of Smashing magazine.

[00:16:41] Speaker A: And editor in chief as well.

[00:16:43] Speaker C: Yes, yes.

And so he is a very, very big name when it comes to designing ux.

And that’s also what he’s going to talk about. So he will share from experience from his, his own projects, real life tips on how to deal with design in a way that is accessible. And he specifically talked about how do you design for young children? How do you design for older adults?

Dyslexia, colorblindness.

But he has a whole range of topics that will be discussed in his presentation, which is the keynote happening on October 15th at 3pm UTC, in case you’re curious.

Yes, I cannot imagine anyone wants to miss this one.

[00:17:40] Speaker A: No, for sure.

June, I know you have shared the schedule here in our own private chat, but what are you excited about on the schedule? I mean, I know we’re all excited about the keynote, for sure.

[00:17:51] Speaker B: I’m excited. Well, the thing I like about WPAD is that we don’t just talk about web accessibility. We talk about a lot of different topics that touches upon digital world.

So I’ve always been very interested in making how do we go beyond just the web sites, but what else is in the digital world that needs to be accessible? And one of them is documentation and PDFs.

I also have a personal journey into newsletter accessibility. But that’s another, another story. But the one I’m looking forward to is called the Art of Accessibility. Making Documents Delightfully Inclusive. That is going to be on October 16th at 9 o’ clock UTC. Okay, now I have in situations have come upon a PDF that is very difficult to navigate. I’ve been filling out a lot of medical paperwork and a lot of them are on form, but in many years past they were on PDFs and it was very difficult to figure out. Okay, well is this something that I can fill in? Is this something that I have to download, print out and then do, you know, upload again?

But seeing that PDFs and Word docs can be made more accessible is, well, like, like it said, delightful to know that it is possible.

So yes, and the speaker for that is Samantha Merritt.

So look for that one. I’ll be there.

[00:19:40] Speaker A: I’m excited that Joe Simpson Jr. Is presenting on making WordPress events accessible.

Several years ago, I know that you both remember I had a very inaccessible experience at a WordCamp in San Diego.

And as a result I wrote an article called Five Days without a Shower. And in that article I presented a list of ideas of things that we could do within WordPress events to make them more accessible.

And I’m happy to say every single one of those has been picked up by, you know, in some way, shape or form.

Mostly because Joe A. Simpson Jr. Spearheaded those. Put it in the handbook. He is very much a proponent of not just web accessibility, but that the people who work on the web should be able to access events as well. And so he’s giving a talk called Make All WordPress events accessible on October 16th at 0000 UTC, which is 8pm in here in New York, for people who want to kind of get an idea of what UTC means. I think in the United States we don’t think about utc, we don’t know what that is. And so we have to kind of. I have, I have cheat codes on my website, on website that I go to to double check what time anything is. Because.

[00:20:57] Speaker C: Yeah, this is the good thing about the WordPress Accessibility Day. Website. It shows the timing UTC but it also gives you a localized time.

[00:21:06] Speaker A: I love that too.

[00:21:07] Speaker C: So if you’re not entirely sure just go check out the schedule and you’ll see localized to your browser where.

Yeah. What time it will be for you.

[00:21:17] Speaker A: Absolutely.

[00:21:18] Speaker C: That’s actually one of the challenges because one of the sessions I’m looking forward to Most is at 4am local time for me so I’m afraid it’ll have to be an all nighter because I just cannot miss the presentation by and I hate their names. I’m sorry, I’m going to butcher them. I don’t hate the names, I hate pronouncing them wrong because that’s what I’m going to do is Dine Pulsar and Akosua Asaberi and they’re talking about accessibility testing on WordPress sites.

They say a lot of people know they should be doing it but have no idea where to start with all the screen readers and everything.

So they’re going to do sort of an introduction guide to getting started and I like those practical hands on sessions. So I’ll be awake at 4am local.

[00:22:19] Speaker A: But June, for people who can’t be awake 24 hours, what happens to the rest of the videos after our WordPress accessibility day is done?

[00:22:29] Speaker B: Well that’s the work of our volunteers.

I’ll call for volunteers are open right now and they will be helping on event day and then post events.

So one of their job is going to be to vet through the videos and then prepare them so that we can repost them to be re watched later on. And that takes a little time so be patient with us on that.

There is 24 of them that we have to go through.

[00:23:02] Speaker A: We have to chop up. It’s basically one gigantic video on YouTube.

[00:23:06] Speaker B: Yes.

[00:23:06] Speaker A: That we then have to chop up and add bumpers to and all of the. All of the things.

[00:23:11] Speaker B: Exactly. And just double check that the captions are correct. And there’s so many little details that the volunteer teams go through to make that good for all of us.

But yeah, but to Taco’s 4am My 4am is also one that I’m looking forward to and it’s about risk management in accessibility and it’s always an interesting conversation when you’re talking to people who aren’t as well versed in accessibility and to figure out a way to explain to them why it is important in the business world.

That’s one that I’m looking forward to at my 4am taco.

[00:23:59] Speaker A: My challenge one is 1am local time.

The future is automated, but will it be accessible?

We have to get an AI talk in there somehow, I think.

I mean, AI is just such a big buzz right now. But I think that when we rush into technologies, we often keep accessibility as an afterthought. So we develop the technology, then we try to retrofit it. I think it’s really good that Rose Kavuva, if I say her name properly, I hope, is talking about how do we make sure that when we’re using all this automation that it’s. That we start with that idea of accessibility instead of trying to retrofit things backwards.

[00:24:40] Speaker B: So, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

[00:24:43] Speaker A: Very cool.

[00:24:45] Speaker B: Anything?

[00:24:46] Speaker A: I didn’t ask you that you’d like to be asked before we wrap up. Anything. Any other thoughts?

[00:24:51] Speaker B: I would like to address the sponsorship.

So sponsorship is still open to bronze level positions. And at $500 level bronze position, you get a dedicated webpage on WPAD and an opportunity to include a digital swag of your choice.

So I hope that people will take opportunity on that. If that is not economical for you. There is also a micro sponsorship at $150, and that can go all the way up until event day. That you can sign up for that, that you get a logo on the website, on the sponsors page.

So y.

We value our sponsors and we are very thankful that they provide a little bit of economical financial stability for us. And so we encourage you to support us in that manner if you’re able to. And if not, donations are open and we’ll take those at any time. That’s right.

[00:26:02] Speaker A: And just a note on sponsorship. The sponsorship absolutely pays for all of our technologies and things like that. None of the volunteers and the organizers are also volunteers. None of us are making money off this. This is something that we do from the goodness of our heart. So all of the money that we raise actually goes to support the technology that we need.

And we do pay our translators, I believe. Is that correct, June? So, yeah, our translators. Because that is an arduous work. We don’t ask volunteers to spend hours and hours and hours translating into their own language or other languages. But so that is paid if you’re interested in translating. We also want to hear from you as well.

What about you, Taco?

[00:26:42] Speaker C: Well, and that goes for volunteers as well. We have a call for volunteers open, so like you said, it’s an unpaid position, but you’ll be closer to the speakers. You’ll be helping out, making this event possible.

Ideally, we want to have volunteers spread all across the world because it’s a 24 hour event.

And I mean the three of us are probably crazy enough to get up at 4am and watch those talks.

But ideally we want to have people from all over the world so that they can do daytime shifts volunteering and we still get that 24 hour coverage. So if you want to be part of this, if you feel like, hey, maybe I can spend the money to get that micro sponsorship or run sponsorship or. But I want to help out, sign up as a volunteer.

It’s still possible for a couple more days. So September 19th is the deadline for signing up as a volunteer.

[00:27:47] Speaker A: And Jude, where do people go to find all the information online?

[00:27:51] Speaker B: Go to 2025.wpaccessibility.day.

[00:27:59] Speaker A: All the info is there, all of the signups. Yeah, the schedule, the registration isn’t open quite yet or it is.

[00:28:06] Speaker B: Registration has been open.

[00:28:07] Speaker A: Oh, perfect.

[00:28:08] Speaker B: And yep, you can register now. And yeah, take a look at the sponsor page and take a look at the schedule page. Know who your speakers are.

Yeah, it’s, it’s, there’s a lot of information and there’s a lot of tabs, but all useful information.

[00:28:25] Speaker A: And why is registration required?

[00:28:29] Speaker B: Because we are going doing this event through Zoom.

So we need to know how many people are entering into Zoom. So registration is required to do that.

[00:28:41] Speaker A: It’s not just broadcast on YouTube. So you do need to be, you need to be present in the Zoom room. So you do have to register. You can register on the day of, that’s fine too. But if you register in advance and get it on your calendar and you won’t miss it.

[00:28:55] Speaker B: Exactly.

[00:28:55] Speaker C: Absolutely. And there’s an extra benefit because for those who are watching the episode with video, you can see that both June and I are wearing a shirt that has hands on it.

And if we go back a little bit, it says WordPress Accessibility Day 2025 just below that.

And this is the official shirt for the 2025 edition and WPAD. So it’s the American Sign Language Alphabet.

And you can get your own copy of this shirt if you decide to do a donation during registration.

So you don’t have to, you don’t have to get the shirt, but you can.

And how cool is it to walk around with WP Accessibility Day shirt?

[00:29:47] Speaker A: The back is even my favorite. Could you show us the back, Taco?

[00:29:51] Speaker C: I think I can. Yes, yes.

[00:29:53] Speaker A: So the back says alt equals in quotations WPAD in American Sign Language on the front of a light blue T shirt. I love that we’ve added alt text to the T shirt itself. Just a little fun.

[00:30:07] Speaker C: Yes, exactly.

[00:30:10] Speaker A: Fantastic.

Well, thank you both. Taco, your afternoon. June, your morning. Thank you for joining me today.

[00:30:17] Speaker B: Thank you.

[00:30:17] Speaker A: Underrepresented Internet tech representing. Absolutely. For accessibility on the web. So thank you for being here. Hopefully we’ll see Everybody on the 15th and 16th of October.

[00:30:29] Speaker C: I can’t wait to see everyone.

[00:30:31] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:30:31] Speaker A: Fantastic.

[00:30:32] Speaker B: Go check it out.

[00:30:33] Speaker A: Go check it out. All right. Bye, everybody.

[00:30:36] Speaker B: Bye.

[00:30:37] Speaker C: Bye. Bye.

[00:30:39] Speaker A: If you’re interested in using our database, joining us as a guest for an episode or just want to say Hi, go to underrepresentedintech.com See you next week.