We threw a party at WordCamp US 2024 called Accessibility Craft IRL, in collaboration with AccessiCart. Amber and Steve share a retrospective on the event, as well as a series of short, in-person interviews with people who attended.
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Chris: Welcome to the Accessibility Craft podcast, where we explore the art of creating accessible websites while trying out interesting craft beverages. This podcast is brought to you by the team at Equalize Digital, a WordPress accessibility company, and the proud creators of the Accessibility Checker plugin. And now, onto the show.
Amber: It’s Amber and I’m here today with Steve.
Steve: Hello everyone.
Amber: And this is going to be a sort of special episode of Accessibility Craft. It’s our Accessibility Craft in real life meetup, IRL meetup recap. Because we actually met in person for a meetup with a bunch of people.
Steve: Yeah.
Amber: So, if you want to get show notes for this very unique episode and a bunch of links to a bunch of different beverages, and other things, you can find them if you go to AccessibilityCraft.com/088. So Steve, I thought it would be good for us to start just talking about our Accessibility Craft meetup, which we held in person in conjunction with WordCamp US. You know, I, I want to have some high level thoughts about hosting a meetup and, and some things like that, because this is the first time we’ve done an in person meetup versus all the virtual meetups that we do.
But , of course, first. We have to talk about beverages. Do you, do you have a beverage you’re going to drink today?
Today’s Beverage
Steve: Yeah, yeah. So this is kind of our BYOB episode, right? Bring your own beer. And so I reached back in the back of the refrigerator and I pulled out a a draft beer that I have back there.
So we’re going to be talking about a brewery on the West coast in this episode, but I’m going to juxtapose that with a brewery on the East coast. So I’ve got a drink here called the Heady and Topper by the The Alchemist. It’s a brewery in Vermont. Let me hold that up to the, up to the screen. You
Amber: had to bring some East Coast love to this podcast.
Steve: East Coast love to the West Coast.
Amber: So you were much better than me because I looked and all I have, right now is I have a leftover of that strawberry shortcake beer and I was like, meh. So I brought water.
Steve: Oh, there you go.
Amber: Have you tried this beer that you have?
Steve: No, I haven’t. This is, this is the first time. So this is a, on the, on the front of it, there’s a, like a line drawing. Like a one color line drawing of a man with a beard drinking a pint glass and his head is exploding in what looks like a cloud of hops. Is that what you would say that is?
Amber: Yeah, I think so. That is kind of what it looks like. I’m a little jealous now. I love trying new beers, so I’ll live vicariously through you. Of course, we’re going to talk a bunch about Migration Brewing and their beers on this episode. We just, I thought about trying to like buy a can and sneak it back in the air. I didn’t know how well that would work. I mean, obviously it would have had been my packed luggage because it wouldn’t be small enough to get through security. But then I was like, what if it explodes in my suitcase? That might not be very good.
Steve: No.
Amber: I didn’t do it.
Steve: Some stinky clothes on the way back.
Amber: Yeah. So, are you gonna, are you gonna open that up and tell us how it tastes?
Steve: Yeah, yeah. So this is an ale. Let me, I can read you it’s it’s called Heady and Topper, is an American double Indian pale ale. This beer is not intended to be the biggest or most bitter. It is meant to give you a wave after wave of hoppy goodness.
on your palate. Tremendous amounts of American hops will creep up on you and leave you with a a dense hop finish in your mouth. So drinkable, so scary. I don’t know why it’s so scary. That’s weird.
Amber: But if you like it, then maybe we’ll have to get something else from this brewery for a different podcast episode.
Steve: Yeah.
It’s not very strong on the nose.
It’s pretty smooth, pretty… It’s not bitter. It’s like a, like you would expect an ale to be. So it’s pretty good. How’s your water?
Amber: My water is quite delicious and very cold because it has lots of ice. And you know, it’s in an Accessibility Craft pint glass, so I enjoy it. I’m, I’m, I’m nerding out here because I’ve got my pint glass and my matching Accessibility Craft baseball t-shirt with the green sleeves.
Steve: There we go. Now I’m on brand. There you go. No, this is good. It’s, it’s smooth.
Amber: So let’s talk about Migration Brewing.
Steve: Yeah.
Amber: And later on, you can tell us whether you think the beer you’re currently drinking is better than the one you had there or not. But, we held our meetup in conjunction with WordCamp US.
I mentioned that before, so we were out in Portland. It’s not very often that Steve and I are in the same state and we found Migration Brewing, which is a brewery that has three different locations across Portland. They do make a lot of canned and bottled beer, so you might be able to order it or pick it up if you are close by to them.
They also had food at their pubs. I’m curious, Steve, what did you think about the brewery that we went to?
Steve: I mean, I thought it was great. I mean, it was kind of a small place, but like, we had like, what they called the annex to off to the side. Right? And it had pretty good space for us. We kind of spread out into the outside when it wasn’t raining or sprinkling and, and into the actual bar.
And they kept kind of corralling us back into the annex because we had so many people there.
Amber: And a few, there were a few people that were like, I didn’t RSVP. And I was like, you’re all good.
So we what we had done, we partnered up with our friend, Bet Hannon from AccessiCart and she and I split drink tickets. And so, well, and you also, so we got drink tickets and the three of us had them and we were just handing them out. I think we had told everyone that we were going to cap at 75 drink tickets. So we did run out of drink tickets. But, but it was, it was fun.
Steve: Yeah. Yeah. It was great. So, maybe we should talk about what we drank, the Migration Brewery.
Amber: Yeah.
Steve: But what drink did you get, Amber?
Amber: So, I got a cherry lime sour which is a fruited kettle sour ABV 5. 8%, and basically how they describe it is they take a base kettle sour beer, and then they explode it with an abundance of fruit. For this iteration, they said they were trying to find something tropical that would bring the sun out and that has blood orange, tangerine juice, mango puree and ginger root as well. I don’t totally get how you add all those things and come up with cherry lime.
I did wonder about that. I was like, why does this description say this? But it did kind of have like a cherry lime flavor. I really liked it. I like sours a lot. I thought it, it was super easy to drink. It did have a really good tart flavor. So I enjoyed it. What did you drink when you were there?
Steve: Yeah. So I was being a good boy. And I had me a non alcoholic, so they have the, the Ripped IPA the description of it is it’s a modern IPA finish dry allowing the hops to take all the glory with plentiful aroma and flavor. So it, it, it has like it a citrusy grapefruit kind of crisp finish.
And I, I don’t know if I got a lot of grapefruit when I was drinking it, but like, it was, it was like a, you know, IPA, what you would expect from an IPA, a little…
Amber: So, bitter kind of?
Steve: A little more bitter than I would like, not smooth like this Heady and Topper from Alchemist, the Alchemist Brewery, but yeah, a little more, a little more bitter.
It was pretty good. I mean, for being a non alcoholic, it did the job, I think. So, we may have skipped over this a little bit. So Migration Brewing, this is a WordCamp, right? And we’re going to a brewery called Migration Brewing, like migrating your websites, which I thought was kind of a neat tie in.
Preparing for Accessibility Craft IRL
Steve: So Amber, how did you find this place? Like what stood out to you about it?
Amber: Yeah, so when we decided we wanted to host a side event, which we’d never done before I knew, of course, I wanted it to be a brewery. One, because Portland is really known for having a lot of local beers but also just, I’m like, I want it to tie in with Accessibility Craft and, and make sense.
So I started looking for breweries. I had some specific criteria that I looked at. So of course I wanted there to be food because it was going to be at six o’clock and I didn’t want people to show up and then leave right away because they wanted to go get dinner somewhere else. So they had a full menu and there were a couple of the breweries that I looked around there didn’t have food or they’d be like, we can get a food truck to come.
And I’ll be totally honest. I know Portland is huge into the food trucks. I’m not a huge food truck person. I feel like food trucks are always just really expensive for less good food because they’re making them without a full kitchen. I don’t know. Probably a whole bunch of people listening to this podcast just like decided that they hate me for saying that.
Steve: Well the food trucks have a lot of meat options too, right?
Amber: Yes, also, it’s a lot harder for, for a vegetarian like me to find good food at a food truck. So, so I was like, I want a brewery that has a real kitchen, so that, but then the other thing too is, you know, I wanted to make sure it was going to be accessible.
So, what does that mean? It means that every place I reached out to, if they didn’t have accessibility information on their website, I literally asked them when I submitted the form, I said, I want to confirm that it’s an ADA compliant building. I knew that there might be people attending who used wheelchairs or mobility scooters or canes, and I wanted to make sure that it wasn’t, you know, up a whole bunch of flight of stairs without an elevator or that it, you, you know, had ADA compliant bathrooms that would make it easy for those people to go to the bathroom.
So I did end up actually ruling out a couple of breweries that got back to me and they had space for us and they’re like, oh, you can be on our rooftop. And I’m like, okay, great. Is there an elevator? No. Okay, then we can’t go there because you can’t have any event, but especially an accessibility event at a place that’s not accessible.
So that was a big thing. In just that process going back and forth with them. And of course, you know, looking at food. The other thing was I did want there to be a wide variety of beverages. So we’ve talked in this podcast before about how I’m not a giant IPA fan.
And West Coast is super into IPAs. And a lot of the breweries were like, they make six different kinds of IPA. So I liked Migration Brewing because they had just a huge range of beers. So they, they of course have a lot of IPAs, but they have Saison’s, they have the Sour, Pilsner’s, Pale Ale’s. Even a porter and a stout, which is more rare.
I don’t find those as much on the West Coast. So I was like, this will appeal to a lot of people’s tastes. And then there was non alcoholic beverages non alcoholic beers, which is unique because sometimes if you go to a brewery, their non alcoholic option is just, you know, Coke, which of course I know you’d be fine with.
Yeah. But there might be people that are like, I want to try a non alcoholic beer. So I really liked that they had a wide variety.
Steve: Yeah. Yeah. It was good.
Amber: Yeah.
Accessibility Craft IRL Retrospective
Steve: So you mentioned we had like a hundred people, right? Yes. And And so how do we, how do we think it went? Was it like from, from like a networking or just a hangout?
Like how, I mean, for me, I thought it went great. You know, I, I ended up like, it was kind of a funny story. I ended up in a circle of people. And we started, you know, started coming up where, where people are from. And it was like, there was like five or six or seven of us and like every single one of us are from Ohio.
Amber: You guys all just found each other? Are you like magnetically attracted to one another?
Steve: Somehow the universe attracted all of us Ohio people together into a circle. And it was like, you know, now some were, have moved out of Ohio, but they were born in Ohio and, and raised in Ohio. But some of us are still here, like me.
So we called it our Ohio circle and it was, it was pretty interesting.
Amber: Yeah, that’s fun. Yeah. We, I mean, so we didn’t really have an agenda for this. It was very much just a show up network chat. I think about 30 minutes in just very briefly. I shouted a brief thanks for coming to the room and gave Bet the opportunity to introduce herself to people as well.
Steve: For the, for the listeners, Bet is who?
Amber: Oh yeah. So who I mentioned before, Bet Hannon from AccessiCart, who helped co sponsor the event. And so since she was helping us do drink tickets, which was great because we are a small company, so it was good to team up with someone else so that we could you know, give out more beverages.
So she also had an opportunity to say thank you. And, you know, we, we required registration up front mostly because the brewery was like, they really wanted a count of people. And I was like, I need to be able to know how many people roughly think they’re coming. And then otherwise it was show up.
It’s so great to see you. I felt like I got to talk to almost everybody, even if it was only for a few minutes, it’s always hard when you’re the host, you know? But I would give them a drink ticket or a Bet would, or you would and we had koozies and we were giving out koozies to people who wanted them.
And then the other thing that I did for a while there, and we’re going to have these recordings later on in this episode, was I did some micro interviews with people. By micro interviews, I mean some of them are one or two minutes long. Where they just talked about their beverage, and then they shared a, like, accessibility tip, which is sort of fun.
So, later in this episode, we are going to play those, so you can hear from a small handful of the people who came, who were brave enough to get on camera and share their thoughts on the beverages at Migration Brewing and what they think about when they think about accessibility. So this, it’ll be, it’ll be sort of fun, I think.
Steve: Yeah, yeah. I was just handing out drink tickets and talking to people pretty casually.
Amber: Everybody likes you when you’re giving them drink tickets. I figured that one out.
Steve: It’s a, it’s a, it’s a you know, if you go to these events and you find yourself being a little bit of an introvert or an omnivert, like, I call myself an omnivert, right?
Amber: What does that mean?
Steve: I’m extroverted and introverted.
Amber: Oh, okay, gotcha.
Steve: Yeah. It’s not like
Amber: You like to eat the introverted and the extroverted people.
Steve: No, no. Yeah. But but that’s definitely an icebreaker when you’re giving out free drinks. That’s, it’s really easy to talk to people. So, and it’s kind of fun to be the, you know, the drink ticket fairy, you know, just going around and giving people free drinks.
I may, I may have given a couple of people two tickets.
Amber: So if you’re listening to this, you got two tickets from Steve, that means he really likes you.
Steve: That’s right.
Amber: You know, I think one of the things that I liked about our event, and I mean, there’s so many parties that happen, side parties there. And I was a little worried. Well, first I was like, will people come?
Do they care enough about us or, or whatever to come hang out when they have all these other options? I think we were competing with Elementor, which Elementor throws really great parties, like at the same time. But one of the things that I thought was, was neat about our event was that we brought in a lot of people from different parts of the community.
Like there were a lot of different hosting companies where they all came. And I think a little bit because we are, we’re not a hosting company. We’re not a competitor really to anyone. And the one person who maybe might think of us as a competitor, we teamed up to organize the event together.
I felt like that was sort of nice that we saw a lot of faces and maybe that’s what’s great about WordPress in general and WordCamps in general, is that a lot of companies come together to just try and build community together without the competition. And I enjoyed that at our meetup. You know, you could see people from A2 and GoDaddy and all of, and WP Engine and all of these different hosts, like talking to each other and having a good time, you know, having beverages, chatting about WordPress or work or whatever that might be, accessibility, hopefully.
I don’t know. I think it was a success. Do you think it was a success?
Steve: Yeah. I mean, there were, you know, there was not, there was no agenda other than the just have a drink with friends and have some good conversations over some good food and good drinks and and it’s kind of just part of that, you know, relation building with people in the community. And I think it was, it might have been we probably picked a good night to have it too.
Amber: So I’m curious. Now put on your business owner hat here for a minute.
Steve: Okay, hold on. Oh,
Amber: He’s, he put on his WCAG hat.
So, okay, so now that you have your business owner hat on.
Steve: Yep.
Amber: What do you think hosting an outside event at a conference like WordCamp US did for us as a company, we’ll answer the second part of the question I have later, cause I know you can see my show notes, but for us as a company, was it worth the time investment to plan and the money? Do you think it, it did anything beneficial for us?
Steve: I mean, from a monetary standpoint, I don’t think it was expensive at all.
Amber: Oh yeah, it was way cheaper than sponsoring the conference.
Steve: Totally. Totally. It was, and especially if you partner with somebody, you know, like we did with Bet Hanon you know, that cuts costs down dramatically. So like, I don’t think cost really was a, a, a factor at all. In the time we were already there, right?
We were, so I don’t really think there was much cost in that. But it’s hard to, it’s hard to equate, like, a return on something like this. But I think what it is, is just, it’s part of a broader scope of just being a relatable company. It, you know, you know, we’re everything’s so digital these days. It’s nice to have something that’s tangible and nice to have, to actually meet these people in real life and, and, and talk to them and, and you know.
So I, I think that you can’t really like attach a monetary, well, if we invested X number of dollars into this event, we should get X number of sales, you know, like it’s very hard. I think it’s, it’s just part of a broader scope of, of, of being relational with our customers and, and, and our peers. And, and so I think it just feeds into the, the holistic picture of our company.
Amber: Yeah. I agree. Making us look, be human, right? Hey, now people know I have legs. Like I, I do think, I think there’s just that, I do wonder a little bit. It’ll be interesting to see how our podcast listens change? Because I didn’t really have any sort of objective of, we’re going to run an event, people are going to, and we’re going to give people free drink tickets and then they’re going to be motivated to go buy our plugin.
Like, reality. No.
Steve: Right.
Amber: I think we’re more likely to get people using the plug in from our showcase talk.
Steve: Sure, sure.
Amber: Not from running a side event. But I was sort of wondering, you know, We haven’t done a ton to promote the podcast, aside from we share it on our social media when episodes come out, but we haven’t, you know, like, even I think spent time like trying to get it added to like lists of WordPress podcasts or accessibility podcasts or we obviously don’t run any ads to promote it.
We don’t like, I don’t even know if you can do this. Maybe you can do this, like an Apple podcast, be like, pay them money to put your thing higher up. We don’t really do that. But I was thinking that running the event and calling it that, and then it was listed on the, the WordCamp side events page on their website, which brought people there.
And then we’ll. Maybe just increase awareness that the podcast exists. And then that was part of why I was like, let’s give people koozies. I love the koozies. They’re my favorite swag. They don’t even have our company name on them, which some marketing people would probably say is like the worst branding ever, but I’m also like, I want to give people things that they’ll use.
And I think our little alligator is so cute. And, and they are connected to the podcast , but I was like, maybe. Now people will have heard about it and then they took the koozie home with them that will motivate them to go look up some Episodes and listen and then it’s this long tail kind of thing, right?
Then they learn more about accessibility from the podcast and then it motivates them to want to try and improve accessibility on their side I don’t know.
Steve: Yeah. And I think last year at WordCamp US we sponsored, right? So we had a table and, you know, people could walk by and we can have a lot of conversations pretty organically that way.
And I think this year we took a little bit of a different approach, right? We did not sponsor, but we, we, we spoke, we were on stage three times, Amber and I had two separate talks and Amber did a speed, speed build. And then we had, we had our little
Amber: Don’t go watch that one, everyone. I did not win.
Steve: It’s not that, it’s not that bad.
And, and we had our meetup and, you know, we made sure we connected with the people we wanted to connect with. So I, you know, I think we did pretty well. It was part of a whole effort of making Equalize Digital visible and connecting with people in real life.
Amber: Mm hmm. Yeah. So, so I think the follow on is this, right?
Do we think it’s beneficial for promoting accessibility in the community?
Steve: Yeah, I don’t know. I mean, I think, I think again, I think it, it just feeds into who we are. I mean, I think the people that know us or the people we talk to when they make the connection that, you know, Accessibility Craft is part of Equalize Digital and Equalize Digital has the Accessibility Checker plugin and they do their audits and remediations and they do, they run the meetup.
It’s like, it’s just all part of a big. I don’t know if like, you can, you can even track or evaluate whether or not like accessibility itself, it is attached to that, that to our meetup with us just having drinks and talking to friends. But maybe it is, maybe it’s in those conversations, right? Every little conversation.
And, and of course, you know, like you said, you grabbed people and pull ’em outside into the sprinkling rain and, and interviewed them about, you know, what they’re drinking and, and you know, their best tip on accessibility. So it does kind of, the conversations come up and I think it happens in those little conversations with each, each person.
Amber: Yeah, you know, I think, I think there was even one or two people where at first when I was going around, I was like, Would you want to do one? And they were like, No, I can’t think of an accessibility tip. I can’t. But then they came to me later. And they’re like, wait, I thought of something that I want to share.
And, and so I do think maybe you’re right. There’s these kind of like small grassroots moments can be really helpful for making people think a little bit more about something than they would have otherwise, you know, and maybe they came because a friend was like, hey, you should go to this and it’s fun and there’ll be a free drink.
Right. But then they got there and they were just, you know, chatting with people and they saw us and all of that. I don’t know. I hope that it all sort of adds up, to something good for the community.
Steve: Yeah. I mean, in the least we got to hang out and have some drinks with friends. Right?
Amber: Which is super fun. I do enjoy that about the WordCamps.
It’s getting to see people in person. So, so what do you think? Should we do another Accessibility Craft in real life meetup at some point in time?
Steve: Yeah. I mean, I think it would be kind of neat. Like, right? .
Amber: Word Camp US 2025. Do we go back to Migration Brewing or do we go somewhere else? Do you give it the thumbs up, thumbs in the middle, thumbs down? What do you think?
Steve: I’d give it a thumbs up. I think it’s a good place to have a little event like that. And I thought, you know, yeah, they were kind of trying to get us to be quiet and push us into our own space, but, I think it went well. I think the food was great. I mean, they had great hamburgers and, and they probably had more fancy food than that. But Amber and I, at the beginning of this, we ordered a meal and we just had to shove it down real quick in like five minutes. But good food. I mean, there’s a lot of space there.
I, I give it a thumbs up.
Amber: Yeah, I think I’d give it a thumbs up. I definitely give their beer a thumbs up. So if you’re able to find Migration Brewing beer near you, it is definitely worth trying, at least the one I had. And I think most people thought that it was good, but we’re going to let them all speak for themselves.
Accessibility Craft IRL Guest Conversations
Amber: So stay tuned because what’s about to happen is you’re going to meet some of our attendees who came to the meetup. They’re going to tell you about their beverage of choice and share some accessibility tips.
Sandy Edwards
Amber: So, start by introducing yourself and what you do.
IRL Guest: I am Sandy Edwards. I am with Bluehost and my role is to help support agencies in everything that they do and what they do online.
Amber: And, did you have anything to drink tonight?
IRL Guest: I have not.
Amber: Do you know what you might order?
IRL Guest: I’m a cider person, so I’m looking forward to trying something on the cider side.
Amber: Awesome. And can you tell me anything that you think is like a good accessibility tip or something you know about accessibility that you think might be surprising to other people?
IRL Guest: Absolutely, so don’t just assume things when it comes to accessibility. Most people don’t know this about me but I actually have some vision issues and I don’t see gradients and so gradients are really hard for my brain to process which means it’s not something that people typically pick up on an accessibility checker.
So just always talk to people that you know and find out if there’s something new about accessibility that you didn’t expect and you’d be surprised that there’s simple ways to help integrate them into your workflow while still keeping things accessible to them. So it’s a little bit of an odd one, not processing gradients, but yeah, that’s something new.
Amber: That is great. Thank you so much.
IRL Guest: Of course.
Alex
Amber: Yes, yes, yes. All right start by introducing yourself.
IRL Guest: I’m Alex. I run the plugin Siren Affiliates and I also do some freelance work as well.
Amber: Great. And what are you drinking today, Alex?
IRL Guest: I I am drinking the Saison currently.
Amber: And how is it? Is it on our very technical thumbs up, thumbs in the middle, thumbs down sign? What do you give it?
IRL Guest: It’s, it’s, it’s, I’d give it a 45. It’s pretty good. Pretty good. Yeah.
Amber: So what’s really good about it and what could be better?
IRL Guest: So it’s I think that the, the, the, I’m going to sound so stupid, but like the presence of the yeast in it is a little less than I want it to be. It’s surprisingly a little hop forward compared to what I expect it to be. But it’s still really good. So I’m not complaining by any means, but it’s, it’s pretty close, but it’s not quite what I wanted.
Amber: Okay. Awesome. So can you share with me an accessibility tip or something you’ve recently learned about accessibility that is surprising or that other people might not know?
IRL Guest: Yeah, I think I have a tip. So the big thing about accessibility for me that I’ve noticed is it’s kind of a twofold thing where one, you have to kind of treat it like. In the same way you would treat like, mobile ready or other, like, general things that people think about whenever they think, oh yeah, you can’t do this thing with your website until it does this thing, right?
And I think that accessibility tends to have this afterthought in this regard, and I think that people really need to start doing a better job of thinking about it as accessible first in the same way that we thought of things as mobile first. And then another thing is, like, if you don’t have a site that’s perfectly accessible, you recognize that it’s probably going to be a ongoing process to really get it done right and done well.
But the best thing you can do, the best time to start was, you know, when you started your website. The second best time is now.
Amber: Awesome. Thank you so much.
Neil McShay
Amber: Alright, so start by introducing yourself and saying what you do.
IRL Guest: I am Neil McShay. I work for SellerWP as a program manager for a couple of different brands there, including the Events Calendar, LearnDash, MemberDash, and Iconic.
Amber: And what are you drinking today, Neil?
IRL Guest: I’m drinking the Cream Ale, which is delicious.
Amber: Fantastic. It gets the thumbs up rating?
IRL Guest: Sorry, yes. That was the next question. Thumbs up rating. It’s very good.
Amber: Wonderful. So what is an accessibility tip that you want to share?
IRL Guest: A long time ago someone pointed out to me that at different times in people’s lives, a website needs to be accessible for different reasons, or a device or any piece of technology and they give the example of a woman with a child who is holding a baby.
At that point in their life they may need to use a phone with one finger and that, that really impressed upon me the, how wide of a scope accessibility sometimes is. That we have to think about people that are temporarily need that, that accessibility.
Amber: Great, thank you so much!
Aji
Amber: Alright, so start by introducing yourself and saying what you do.
IRL Guest: My name is Aji. I run ten LLCs that I own. Five or so of them are property management, or actually own property. The others do all kinds of other different things. I can’t really even remember what they all do. So, next.
Amber: And they all have WordPress websites?
IRL Guest: Yes! Yes they do, actually. Some hosted, some self hosted, but yes.
Amber: Okay. And what were you drinking today?
IRL Guest: Oh a very unappealing porter.
Amber: Oh, unappealing.
IRL Guest: Yes. I’m going to upgrade to something else.
Amber: Okay. So in our very technical rating system, do you give it a thumbs in the middle or a thumbs down?
IRL Guest: You’re talking about the porter?
Amber: Yeah. The porter.
IRL Guest: Oh God, this is a very gladiator thumbs down.
Amber: Oh, bummer.
IRL Guest: It’s getting me headed.
Amber: All right. So what is an accessibility tip that you might have or something that you have learned recently about accessibility that you want to share?
IRL Guest: You know, I didn’t know this, but I had a friend who has a lot of vision impairment stuff.
And so, she has an app, apparently, that zooms in on different parts of the screen. Because that’s the only way she can actually visually see it, right? I was blown away. I thought that was amazing. I think anybody who incorporates that kind of feature on their website is to not, I mean, they should, everyone should do it.
You know, I don’t know what’s involved in doing that.
Amber: Yeah. Adding support for magnification.
IRL Guest: But, but localized magnification, you don’t need a magnifier. Cause you do the whole thing, it’s useless. You know, you can’t look at the whole thing like that. It’s localized that makes it useful.
Amber: Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you so much.
Mark Westguard
Amber: Alright, so start by introducing yourself and what you do.
IRL Guest: Mark Westgaard from WSForm, we’re a WordPress form plugin. And I’ve been in the WordPress space for, oh, not as long as most people, but about 10 plus years.
Amber: Great. And what are you drinking today, Mark?
IRL Guest: This is the amber lager, because I’m a big amber drinker, and they had amber here, which I’m delighted about.
So thank you for having me. And I’ve drunk my drink coupon, but I’m going to go and get another one.
Amber: So you give that a thumbs up then? That beer?
IRL Guest: This gets a thumbs up, yeah.
Amber: Yes. All right.
IRL Guest: Absolutely. It’s a very, very nice lager. I’m impressed with it. But there are plenty more in there. There’s about another 20 different lagers I can go through. So it could be a long night.
Amber: So you’re going to try a different type of beer next time?
IRL Guest: I’m going to try something different, yeah.
Amber: All right. So what is an accessibility tip that you want to share or something you’ve learned recently about accessibility?
IRL Guest: Ooh, I, I have learned some stuff this week.
I’m trying to remember what it was ’cause I was talking to somebody who’s doing a accessibility review on different form plugins and she was telling me that on a checkbox, you should always make sure that you have a label enabled by default on a checkbox and not make it so somebody has to check it. So we were actually making a change in WS form to make sure that we are doing that.
Amber: Well, that’s fabulous. Great.
Robert Jacobi
Amber: Alright, so start by introducing yourself and sharing what you do.
IRL Guest: Hey, Amber. It’s Robert Jacobi, Vice President of Americas for BotGuard. We’re a cyber security firm helping out WordPress and hosting companies.
Amber: And what are you drinking tonight, Robert?
IRL Guest: I have some kind of beverage that’s at 7. 4%. I honestly don’t know what the beer is.
Amber: Is that how you chose it?
IRL Guest: No, it was absolutely random. I just, like, picked the first thing on the menu.
Amber: Okay, so we have a very technical rating system of thumbs up, thumbs in the middle, thumbs down, what do you give it?
IRL Guest: Thumbs up.
Amber: Alright, so whatever the beer is called it gets a thumbs up.
IRL Guest: Yes. The most fascinating thing about accessibility, which I never realized, was how much it actually helps people who don’t think they have accessibility problems.
It helps everything from search engine optimization to just general readability and usability across all sorts of devices. That people who don’t think they need accessibility actually can take advantage of. So that sort of like, mix of metaphors, as I’ll screw it up is amazing. Accessibility has been translated in my head to being, make it easier and better for everyone else.
Amber: Awesome.
Jerry Jones
Amber: So start by introducing yourself and what you do.
IRL Guest: My name is Jerry Jones. I’m a software engineer and I’m a core contributor to the block editor, or like, yeah, WordPress editing stuff.
Amber: Great. And what are you drinking tonight?
IRL Guest: Right now I’m drinking water, but earlier I was drinking the fresh hops saison and it was really good.
Amber: And you give both the water and the saison a thumbs up?
IRL Guest: Yes, the water tastes like water, I can assure you.
Amber: Very important. Okay, and can you give us your accessibility tip?
IRL Guest: Yes I think that the web would be about like 50 percent better if we, everyone started using like, instead of click here, don’t use it.
Instead just describe what you want the person to click on. Like, is it going to take you to shop, or wherever. Whatever it is, just describe what you want to happen when you click on it. That’s tip one. And two is managing focus. Which is like, if you’re using a keyboard or something and you press enter and something happens, like, where does focus go? Just make sure it goes somewhere that you want it to instead of just to the abyss.
Amber: Yeah,
IRL Guest: Everything would be a lot better if like, people could do those two things for the web.
Kyle Van Deusen
Amber: Alright, so start by introducing yourself and what you do.
IRL Guest: My name is Kyle Van Deusen and I run an online community for WordPress users named The Admin Bar and run an agency called Ogle Web Design.
Amber: And, did you have anything to drink tonight, Kyle?
IRL Guest: I had a couple glasses of water earlier now. They could have had more ice in them, but I will still give them a thumbs up because any water is good water.
Amber: Okay. But not enough ice for your taste.
IRL Guest: Not enough. I would have preferred more.
Amber: This is how we know we’re at WordCamp US and not WordCamp Europe because in WordCamp Europe, they don’t care about the ice.
IRL Guest: No, I wouldn’t be able to do that.
Amber: You get no ice there. That would be the thumbs down water.
IRL Guest: Yeah. Yeah.
Amber: Okay. So what is an accessibility tip?
IRL Guest: I would say the biggest eye opener for me has been just going through my websites and using a keyboard to navigate through them. Every time I’ve done that, I’ve found all kinds of things that I wouldn’t have found otherwise, so just taking the extra few minutes to try to get through everything with your keyboard has been huge for me.
Amber: Awesome!
Ankush Khanna
Amber: Okay, so start by introducing yourself and what you do.
IRL Guest: I’m Ankush Khanna, I work as an account manager at Evolving Web, so I basically sell websites. We’re a digital agency that specializes in making websites, so if you ever need one, I’m the guy.
Amber: Great, and what are you drinking tonight?
IRL Guest: I’m drinking this beer called Apache Opale, and it’s really nice. I like it, I’m enjoying it.
Amber: So you give it a thumbs up?
IRL Guest: Yeah, I would give it like an 8 out of 10. Like, I’ve had better, but I’ve had worse, you know what I mean? Like, it’s nice. I’ll give it a thumbs up, yeah.
Amber: Okay, and what is an accessibility tip that you want to share?
IRL Guest: I want to talk about color contrast. Because it really bothers me when I go to a website and I see like red and black together. Like, you can’t put those two colors together. So essentially, I would say like, that’s really important for like people with like, you know, different issues. So color contrast, make sure that you have the right colors put together, put a white background and put like a dark color on top of it.
So everyone can see properly.
Beth
Amber: So start by introducing yourself and what you do.
IRL Guest: I am Beth. I work for Nine Planets LLC. I do a little bit of copywriting. And I’m just kind of dipping my toes into the world of accessibility. I’m really excited about it. Really interested in understanding how to make the internet more functional for everybody.
Amber: So, what are you drinking today, Beth?
IRL Guest: Oh, right. Oh, nice. Something amber. Not sure.
Amber: Okay. How would you rate it? Is it good, bad, just okay?
IRL Guest: It’s like, I would give it like a nine out of ten.
Amber: Okay. You’d order it again?
IRL Guest: I think I’d give it a seven out of ten.
Amber: All right. And what is your one tip for for accessibility.
IRL Guest: Okay. I’m going to try to find my words for this. But I think when people think about accessibility, they tend to think about a very narrow subset of the population that are having trouble getting their needs met. And I think that’s the wrong way to frame it in our heads because in reality the truth is, I think this becomes obvious the older you get in life, the more you understand yourself.
Everyone’s working with a different machine. Everybody’s working with a different brain. Every single person is going to interpret your website differently, is going to run into different challenges. And being aware of that is what accessibility is about. So I think just changing the way people frame it in their mind, it’s the same way you take an interest in design with the understanding that you’re just trying to guide people to understand your concept more easily, to be able to grasp what you’re communicating more easily.
It’s the exact same kind of thing. You’re just taking into account the understanding that everybody has. different strengths. Everybody is going to kind of have different pattern recognition that they’re working with and you just try to kind of meet people where they’re at and not get in your own way.
You don’t want to get in your own way and miss out on a big audience. And you don’t want to leave people out that you’d really like to be included. So I think that would be my biggest tip. I’m not someone who’s super well informed, but I’m, everything I’m learning is so fascinating. It’s so eye opening.
I’m really excited about the development of accessibility and how much investment there is in the community, for people trying to make sure everyone in the community can participate online easily.
Amber: Great!
Alicia St. Rose
Amber: Start by introducing yourself and what you do.
IRL Guest: Hi, hello everybody, I’m Alicia St. Rose. I actually have an agency slash coaching business called WP With Heart where I help people and coach them in DIY website development and I also develop custom WordPress sites. So, this is an empty glass because this thing was delicious.
Amber: What was it?
IRL Guest: A Huckleberry Cider. Let’s go. 6. 5 alcohol percentage, so, eat food first is what we’re saying. So anyway, let’s put this aside. , what’s the other question?
Amber: What is an accessibility tip or something you’ve learned about accessibility that you wanna share?
IRL Guest: Okay, so one of the things that I like to share about accessibility is there’s a level of the basic accessibility needs that you want to meet on this site, and that could be met very easily if you just learn how to code HTML semantically and then check your page builder or anything else that you’re using to make sure that it’s semantic HTML, because that’s what screenreaders and focus and keyboard are using. The other thing is, there’s another level to accessibility called comfort. And that comfort is, how do they experience the site the way someone who has sighted or can use their hands or can hear can experience it the same way as someone who has all those faculties?
So you really want to think about the comfort level of someone who is using your site. So, things like, do you link to a blog post using the title of the image and a button that says read more? Because their screen reader is going to read that link off three times. So think about that. Or think about how an image is going to compliment the content that you’ve written.
You want to make sure that you put alt text in there to give them the same experience as someone who’s sighted. And then another tip is, you’re never going to learn it all. So continue to learn in each project that you work on. Just be curious about things that you’re working on, like, hmm, I wonder how block quotes are accessible. Let me check that out and just see what people are saying. So, you don’t have to know it all when you start, but you definitely have to know HTML. You have got to learn HTML, people! It is the skeletal makeup of the web. Can we just get a whoop whoop for learning that properly? And I think that’s all I got, really.
Annie Middleton
Amber: Alright, so start by introducing yourself and what you do.
IRL Guest: I’m Annie Middleton I run Nine Planets Web Design, and yeah.
Amber: And what are you drinking today, Annie?
IRL Guest: I have a seltzer water with lime, and 10 out of 10, I’d get it again.
Amber: Awesome. And what is an accessibility tip or something you’ve learned about accessibility you want to share?
IRL Guest: My tip is that accessibility is a journey, not a destination. Don’t be afraid to get started. It is a very in depth field. There are lots of technical things, but you don’t have to start with all the technical things. Just start somewhere because literally every little individual fix you make to your site is going to improve your website and help people.
Amber: So start by introducing yourself and what you do.
IRL Guest: I am, my name is Jesse Dick. I am a Solutions Architect at an agency called Evolving Web based in Montreal, Canada.
Amber: Okay. And what are you drinking today?
IRL Guest: Oh, I don’t remember. It was a onigiri saison of some kind. Yeah Japanese plum, sour plum saison.
Amber: And we have a very technical thumbs up, thumbs down, thumbs in the middle, rating system. What would you, how would you rate that? Is it good?
IRL Guest: Thumbs up.
Amber: Thumbs up. You would get it again?
IRL Guest: Yeah, yeah.
Amber: Alright, so can you share an accessibility tip or something you’ve learned about accessibility recently?
IRL Guest: Okay yeah, so I’ve heard a lot of people playing with the idea of using AI to write their alternative text for images. And I feel like there’s a lot of caution that needs to be exercised there. And definitely much like all of the AI stuff today, just make sure you really manually review it.
And I mean, very careful, because there’s a lot of, obviously, risks, hallucinations, and issues coming out of that. And just, non-contextual text coming out of that.
Michelle Frechette
Amber: Alright, so start by introducing yourself and what you do.
IRL Guest: Okay, hi! I’m Michelle Frechette. I am the Director of Community Engagement at Stellar WP. I am the Executive Director of Post Status and I’m on the organizing team for WP Accessibility Day this year. And what, if anything, did you drink tonight? I had an amazing cherry sour ale and it was really, really good.
Amber: It’s the thumbs up rating?
IRL Guest: It’s the thumbs up rating. Two of them! Can I give two thumbs up?
Amber: Yes. Alright, what is an accessibility tip or something you want to share about?
IRL Guest: Yeah, so for me, I didn’t know about accessibility even three years ago. And I’ve been learning and growing and doing better and better.
And my best advice to people is start. If you’re going to wait until you think you’re an accessibility expert, you’ve already missed so many people who could have visited your website. So just get started. Find one thing that you can do today and grow from there. Keep working to be more and more accessible.
And eventually, you are going to have an accessible website . I started with Text, I’m sorry, but giving alt text to images and making sure that all of my images have really good descriptions so that people who have, who are blind or have low vision can understand what those are about.
I always put colors in them so if somebody’s colorblind and can see it, then those colors are descriptive for them as well. And then now I learned, like, I learned about how to do better links. So links say what they’re opening up into and as I continue to grow I learn more and more things that make the websites that I work on more accessible.
Robbie Adair
Amber: So start by introducing yourself and what you do.
IRL Guest: Hi, I’m Robbie Adair, and I have OSTraining.com where we teach web development training. And I also have an agency I’ve had for 22 years, Media18.
Amber: And what did you drink tonight?
IRL Guest: I had a little bit of a cava, so like a sparkling wine. And then I had a lot of water, because I’m trying to keep myself hydrated ’cause I’ve been traveling.
Amber: And how would you rate both the cava and the water?
IRL Guest: I’ll give them a medium, a five, six, somewhere in that range.
Amber: Not enough ice in your water?
IRL Guest: I actually like water chilled, but no ice. So, I’m picky.
Amber: Okay. What is an accessibility tip or something you wanna share about accessibility?
IRL Guest: So, one of the first things that I think I always check is, can I keyboard my menu? Like, can I get around this website with just a keyboard? So I always try to just like, put my mouse aside and see can I get around this website.
And, you know, I mean obviously things like alt tags and all that, but I try to see can I physically move through the website with my keyboard. And that’s my, I know it’s pretty basic probably, but that’s my first step at accessibility.
Doreen Webb
Amber: Alright, so start by introducing yourself and what you do.
IRL Guest: Hi, my name is Doreen Webb. I’m actually an e-learning developer at the Bank Administration Institute.
Amber: And did you have anything to drink tonight?
IRL Guest: I did not. I haven’t been here long enough yet.
Looking forward to getting something, but haven’t had anything yet.
Amber: What do you think you’ll order?
IRL Guest: You know, I love a good margarita, but I don’t know if they have that here. But I do like beer too, so probably like a pale ale, if they have beer.
Amber: Okay, and what is an accessibility tip or something you want to share about accessibility?
IRL Guest: My background is actually in visual design, so one of the first things that is really always important to check is the contrast of your colors.
And that’s a common mistake I see a lot, where even companies Accessibility Checkers are great for companies that don’t select accent colors that meet accessibility standards, so use those online contrast checkers and really make sure that the foreground color and the background color have that contrast that’s needed to meet accessibility.
Chris: Thanks for listening to Accessibility Craft. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe in your podcast app to get notified when future episodes release. You can find Accessibility Craft on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more. And if building accessibility awareness is important to you, please consider rating Accessibility Craft five stars on Apple Podcasts.
Accessibility Craft is produced by Equalize Digital and hosted by Amber Hinds, Chris Hinds, and Steve Jones. Steve Jones composed our theme music. Learn how we help make thousands of WordPress websites more accessible at EqualizeDigital.com.