June 28, 2021 — Web forms should work. No doubt about that. And they should work for all visitors, regardless of device or ability.

Gravity Forms set as goal: to ensure that all forms created with Gravity Forms can be WCAG 2.1 AA compliant. It has been quite an eventful journey and Morgan and Rian are happy to share this with you.

Accessibility always was a focus point of Gravity Forms but, with the fast development of changing accessibility requirements and legislation worldwide, more specialised expertise was needed. Therefore Rian Rietveld, web accessibility specialist from Level Level joined the team.

In this talk we show you the steps we took to test and improve the accessibility of the forms build with Gravity Forms. Like doing an initial audit, training the developers and designers, finding good solutions for issues without breaking existing forms, helping the Q&A team with extra test tools and writing documentation.

This talk is for everyone that wants to enhance the accessibility of a web project and wants to learn the way to implement this in their workflow.

September 19, 2019 — O que é o Movimento Web para Todos e o que tem feito para a transformação da web brasileira em um ambiente realmente inclusivo; Como as pessoas com deficiência navegam na web, os tipos de serviços e produtos que procuram, as barreiras de acesso que encontram com frequência; Mercado: as oportunidades sociais e econômicas que as empresas estão deixando de ganhar com a falta de acessibilidade em seus sites; Legislação: o que diz a Lei Brasileira de Inclusão sobre acessibilidade dos sites; Estudo: como está a acessibilidade digital das melhores escolas e universidades do Brasil e dos sites de e-commerce mais acessados do país; Cases e melhores práticas: como tornar um site acessível e atrair pelo menos 45 milhões de brasileiros com algum tipo de deficiência; Programação, design e conteúdo: oportunidades profissionais para quem quer inovar e desenvolver canais digitais acessíveis.

December 12, 2015 — Integrating Accessibility (a11y) into the project process can be downright scary. In this session, I’ll cover basic web accessibility principles for web designers, developers, and site owners, then show how to turn seemingly daunting and confusing accessibility requirements into understandable, actionable tasks and techniques. The talk will cover some of the accessibility-specific WordPress plugins and themes available, as well as some quick, easy tests to integrate into design and development workflows.

October 7, 2015 — “Web Accessibility is not just for developers, there are plenty of things people can do to get involved. This presentation will focus on the different ways you can contribute to Web Accessibility and how you can help spread the word. We will cover some Web Accessibility fundamentals and why it’s important. From there we will go over the various ways you can communicate and increase exposure to Web Accessibility using various terms and avenues. Next we will discuss WordPress Accessibility specifically and the different aspects surrounding it. Finally, we will go over the different ways you can contribute to WordPress Accessibility.
It’s well-known that there is power in numbers, so the more we can advocate the more we can evoke change.

Presentation Slides »

July 27, 2015 — The focus of my presentation is on WordPress and website accessibility; from a front-end perspective. First, I will explain what web accessibility is and why it is important. To continue, I will discuss AODA and Section 508 regulations for Canada and the United States. Then, I will go over some key WCAG 2.0 compliancy requirements a developer will need to ensure the websites they develop are fully accessible. From there, I will showcase a few web accessibility tools, then some WordPress accessibility tools and tips.

May 30, 2015 — One of the recent WordPress accessibility initiatives has been the introduction of the ‘accessibility-ready’ tag for theme authors who wish to submit themes to the WordPress repository. The tag is used to indicate that a theme contains the best practices in web accessibility, and can form the basis of an accessible WordPress website. But uptake has been slow. This presentation looks at what you need to do to get your themes up to the ‘accessibility-ready’ standard – whether or not you intend to submit them to the repository. It’s not hard to do, and the benefits can be enormous for many, many people.
I will also be looking at whether it’s worth following the ‘accessibility-ready’ steps for plugins too.

Presentation Slides »

April 17, 2015 — Prendre en compte l’accessibilité dans les projets WordPress, c’est permettre à tous les internautes d’accéder à votre site sans blocages, c’est faciliter l’accès à l’information et aux services.
Mais quels peuvent être les obstacles ? A travers des démonstrations, nous verrons comment les personnes en situation de handicap utilisent les sites Web et nous mettrons en évidence les difficultés rencontrées.
Et comment éliminer les barrières ? Nous analyserons les solutions existantes comme les thèmes «Accessibility-ready», l’extension WP Accessibility. Nous verrons comment agir sur le code généré par WordPress.
Nous examinerons quelques plugins ayant un bon niveau d’accessibilité ou qu’il est nécessaire d’améliorer.

Presentation Slides »

April 15, 2015 — Meetup topics include themes, plugins and accessibility.

Presentation Slides »

November 4, 2014 — Disabled users help uncover interesting behaviors when Accessible User Experience (UX) research methods are applied to WordPress. Results are very instructive and apply to many use cases.

October 28, 2014 — Accessibility is a growing concern in the WordPress community at large. Accessibility in web design means creating a site that everyone can use. The U.S. Census Bureau says that over 47 million Americans have a disability of some kind. The UN and the World Bank say this adds up to 650 million people worldwide. That’s around 10% of everyone in the world. At some point in our lives, disability will affect most of us, no matter who you are. Every decision you make as a developer affects hundreds of thousands of people (or more!).

The mission statement of WordPress is to democratize publishing through Open Source, GPL software. WordPress ‘out of the box’ is already a great way to make a website accessible. As theme developers we can do more. People who can’t see or hear, others that can’t use a mouse, people who use special assistive devices to access the web — these people need to access websites. As theme developers, we need to know about accessibility.

Accessibility Statement: “Accessibility is the degree to which a product, device, service, or environment is available to as many people as possible.” Cynthia Waddell

There are 2,655 themes in the WordPress.org theme repository. Only 12 of those themes have the tag ‘accessibility-ready’. We can meet those accessibility guidelines with just a few extras steps. We will start with basic things like creating readable headlines and adding alt text to images. From there we will cover some of the information in the Section 508 and WCAG 2.0 Guidelines.

Trisha will provide real world examples from the perspective of her visually impaired son.

We are all responsible for making our part of a project accessible. You will need to shake things and change your processes a bit in order to achieve accessibility.

Presentation Slides »