*This post was originally published on 9/6/23, but we’ve updated it for the 2024 event.
We are beyond excited for this year’s WordPress Accessibility Day (WPAD)!
Not only are we stoked about all the great talks on this year’s docket, but CodeGeek is also once again a Silver Sponsor for this incredible, 24-hour, live-streamed event. 🙌
So, why do we get so jazzed about an entire day to talk and learn about WordPress and web accessibility?
That’s simple: We believe the web should be accessible — for everyone.
Of course, we have more detailed answers to that question, which we shared recently with the #WPAD2024 dream team. ⬇️
Why sponsor WordPress Accessibility Day?
Deciding to become a WordPress Accessibility Day sponsor again was one of the easiest decisions we’ve made all year!
That’s because we believe that the web should be accessible for everyone. Supporting the larger web community effort to keep making progress on this very important objective is one of our core values.
Another key factor for us becoming a sponsor is the incredibly high quality of WordPress Accessibility Day itself. In past years, the Geeks watched many of the sessions, and the caliber of the presentations continues to be top notch.
As a team, it’s important for us to continually support web accessibility education, and our past experiences at WordPress Accessibility Day made us excited to be an active part of this event again.
Has your company done anything to improve the accessibility of its own website or online presence?
Yes, we have! In 2021, we rebuilt our website from the ground up, with accessibility being top of mind. Since the initial launch, we’ve continued to tweak our website to make it as accessible as possible.
Most notably, we’ve focused on these accessibility efforts:
- We installed the Equalize Digital Accessibility Checker plugin.
- This plugin helps us identify and resolve even more accessibility issues.
- In addition, this checker also helps us keep accessibility top of mind as we add new site content.
- We also fixed a few color contrast issues on the site.
- Previously, we had some lighter green and yellow background elements with white heading text, but these weren’t as readable as they could be.
- So we made adjustments to the website’s color palette to pass contrast requirements.
- We’re updating our past blog posts that feature videos and PDF downloads.
- We’re adding accurate captions, transcripts, and text and button links so that these resources are even more accessible.
- We also decided to revisit our monthly newsletter “The Geek Beat” through the web accessibility lens and apply the same standards.
- We’ve already updated headings, addressed color contrast issues, and improved image alt text.
- Next, we’ll run our newsletter through a screen reader and see what additional adjustments we can make.
Our ongoing goal is to continually work to maintain and improve the accessibility of our own website so that anyone who visits us has a wonderful experience.
Do you offer any accessibility-related products or services?
Absolutely! Web accessibility is one of the main services we offer to our clients.
Whether it’s to perform a web accessibility audit on a current site or build a new website that is accessible from the start, we’re here to do all the work needed to make all our clients’ websites as accessible as possible.
If you have an existing website, we offer two accessibility services:
- Accessibility Review – Every site can improve on accessibility. By completing an initial Accessibility Review with us, we can dive deeper into a site and recommend specific accessibility enhancements.
- Monthly Accessibility Plans (MAP) – Through monthly accessibility audits and fixes, we can map out a course so that your website is as accessible as possible — for everyone. In contrast to a one-off accessibility review, our Monthly Accessibility Plans truly do make a bigger (and faster) difference in improving the accessibility of your website.
If you’re building a new site, we build in accessibility from the get-go.
- During the discovery phase, we plan out specific enhancements to make your website more accessible.
- During the design process, we take into account all required WCAG guidelines including color contrast, font size, visual focus indicators and more to make the design of your new website not only ADA compliant, but also easy to use for all website visitors.
- When the site goes into development, we use automated and empirical testing methods to verify that your site is functioning properly and in accordance with as many WCAG guidelines as possible.
- Before launching your website, we provide training to enable you to make your website content accessible when adding new pages and editing content.
- After launching your site, we offer Monthly Accessibility Plans to help you keep your website accessible. Web accessibility is an ongoing process, and we’re here to provide guidance, auditing and fixes on a regular basis to make you and your efforts successful.
Want to see accessibility in action? –> Check out Transfort and The Lincoln Center – City of Fort Collins on our Portfolio — two websites we built whose driving force is to be accessible to all.
We’ve also built two additional web products!
In addition, our team developed (and continues to improve upon) two web products that we built — again with accessibility being top of mind:
- CodeGeek Blocks plugin for WordPress
- CodeGeek Theme for WordPress
This means that new websites built by CodeGeek start out with clean accessibility audits! 🙌
What two things would we like to see changed to better improve accessibility in WordPress?
1) Make image alt text required in the WordPress Media Library.
We believe it would go a long way towards improving accessibility if WordPress required every image to have alt text — or be marked as decorative (and not needing alt text).
As it is now, the WordPress Media Library (and the upload process) makes image alt text seem like a soft recommendation only.
✅ Making image alt text required would greatly improve matters by:
- reducing the number of content-related errors found during an accessibility audit, and
- making accessibility fixes faster for developers — and cheaper for clients.
2) Commit to higher accessibility standards for WordPress-supported plugins.
Over the past two decades, we’ve built many WordPress websites, and there have been too many instances where a third-party plugin has caused accessibility issues.
As a result, we’ve had to spend extra time (and money) to track down and test other plugins to find one that is accessible.
With this in mind, we’d like to see WordPress commit to higher accessibility standards for supported plugins.
- One way WordPress could achieve this would be to have an accessibility certification process for third-party plugins.
- Then they could provide a badge to show which plugins are accessibility verified.
✅ Having higher accessibility standards for supported plugins would result in:
- providing less friction when selecting and building with third-party plugins (reducing time and cost for everyone), and
- making it clear that these plugins will be held to a web accessibility standard.
Do we have a web accessibility resource list?
We sure do!
At CodeGeek, we believe that the web should be accessible — for everyone. And that includes providing web accessibility education that’s understandable and practical to help make that happen.
Here are our most recent blog posts and videos on the subject:
How Much Does It Cost To Make My Website Accessible? – At CodeGeek, we often get asked: How much will it cost to make my website accessible? Read on for our answer to this super complex question, based on 3 key factors.
How To Improve Image Alt Text: 5 Questions To Ask – Writing good alt text for images involves maintaining a careful balance of detail and brevity. Check out our 5 questions to ask before you hit that “publish” button.
Unleashing Inclusivity: Charting a Course to Web Accessibility – Our very own Ron Zasadzinski and Graden Sikes share details to help you chart a path towards making your website accessible in this recording from their presentation at the Fort Collins Internet Pros Meetup.
Developing Accessible Gutenberg Blocks – Are you attending #WPAD2024? Keep your peepers open for our very own senior developer Kevin Sholander, who will be taking us on an accessibility deep dive during his presentation on Oct 9 at 7pm MDT.
Do #WPAD2024 attendees get a little somethin’ in their swag bags?
They do! If you’re attending WordPress Accessibility Day 2024, be sure to check your digital swag bag!
This year, we’re gifting our newest accessibility resource “How to Make PDFs Accessible.” (Which is a PDF, of course!)
- PDFs make information sharing super efficient, but they can also have significant accessibility drawbacks.
- Once you’ve registered, you’ll be able to download this free PDF resource on our sponsor page.
“Thinking about accessibility raises all boats and benefits all.”
— Growing Accessibility in Our WordPress Community (#WPAD2022 panel)
Are you as psyched as we are about WordPress Accessibility Day?
(Yeah, you are!)