Themes, Plugins and Accessibility

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. Graham will also be looking at whether it’s worth following the ‘accessibility-ready’ steps for plugins too.

Presented by Graham Armfield – a Web Accessibility Consultant with his own company Coolfields Consulting. He works with organisations to help them improve the accessibility of their websites – by testing the websites for accessibility, and advising the designers and developers on how to fix issues found. He’s also a WordPress developer, and has built many accessible WordPress websites for clients. He’s an active member of the Make WordPress Accessible Team and has spoken on accessibility to many WordCamps and other WordPress meetups.