How Accessible Is WordPress?

07/28/22 • 38 min

1 Listener

In many instances, WordPress prioritizes accessibility in ways that other CMS’s and open source projects do not. But that doesn’t mean we do things perfectly. In this full-length episode of Press the Issue, Allie Nimmons explores WordPress accessibility from as many angles as she can in order to answer the question – how accessible is WordPress?

Episode Transcript

Monet Davenport: Welcome to Press the Issue, a podcast for Master WP, your source for industry insights for WordPress professionals. Get show notes, transcripts, and more information about the show at masterwp.com/presstheissue.

Allie Nimmons: I love podcasts. I love creating them, but I mostly love listening to them. In my car, while I get ready in the morning, while I make dinner, and every so often I stop and think about how privileged I am that I can listen without any assistive technology or devices.

Allie Nimmons: A lot of the time as makers of the web, we forget how easy it is to just read something or listen to something, or just do something in the way the creator of that thing intended, without wondering if there will be some kind of special option for us. The world has been created with able bodied, neurotypical people in mind. Michelle Frechette, in addition to being a very good friend of mine, is the director of community engagement at StellarWP, co-founder of Underrepresented In Tech, and the director of community relations at Post Status. In a recent episode of our own Underrepresented In Tech podcast, she shared her perspective as a wheelchair user. She had recently given a talk about accessibility, and here’s a little of what she had to say about the content of that presentation.

Michelle Frechette: I talked about Word Camp US in Nashville, and for people who are able bodied, they were like, “Wow, this is a long walk.” Well, for somebody walking with a cane, because at the time that’s what I was using, who’s running out of breath and whose legs and back are about to collapse, it was probably a quarter mile walk. So by the time I got to lunch, because you had to go all the way basically one city block and then halfway down the other one. And so you’re talking about a quarter of a mile there at least. And by the time I got there, I was already stressing about having to walk back. So yeah, I could eat, but now my knees are already hurting. My back’s already hurting. Is that really accessible?

Allie Nimmons: After that experience, Michelle did share her thoughts with the organizers, and the next Word Camp US she made sure to ask about the spatial accessibility of the event. Organizers assured her that the event space was indeed accessible, but that wasn’t completely true.

Michelle Frechette: The people who reviewed those are able bodied walkers, people who go for walks for fun, those kinds of things. And to them it didn’t seem that far. But to somebody who has to use a cane or who can’t walk long distances, it was still... And luckily I had a scooter for Word Camp US that year, but if I hadn’t I would’ve been hurting and I would not have been able to participate to the extent that I did.

Allie Nimmons: We can often find it difficult to really put ourselves in the place of someone who has not lived the way that we do. I will admit before meeting and spending time with Michelle, I didn’t really look at the world from wheelchair level. For example, recently I’ve been looking at apartments to move into. All of them without fail have had only stairs. Previously I may not have given a second thought to that, but each time I think, well Michelle could never visit me here because there’s not an elevator. When we look at the web, things are not that much better. There’s a pretty big disparity between how many people need accessible websites and how many accessible websites there are. As one of the largest tools and communities for website building, WordPress has a lot of power to grow or diminish that disparity.

Allie Nimmons: My name is Allie Nimmons, I’m a WordPress builder, instructor, community member, contributor and digital producer of this podcast. As I press into issues relating to the WordPress open source project and beyond, I want to explore how accessible WordPress is. The code, the systems, the events and the community. Press the Issue is sponsored by Cloudways. Cloudways managed hosting ensures that your sites get the performance boost they deserve. It offers you fast speeds, uptime and managed security at affordable rates. Learn more at cloudways.com.

Allie Nimmons: Press the Issue is sponsored by Weglot. Discover a way to translate your WordPress site that’s easy to install, compatible with all themes and plugins, implements multilingual SEO and translates your site with machine translation, with full post-editing control. Learn more at weglot.com. That’s W-E-G-L-O-T .com.

Allie Nimmons: Accessibility might be a bit of a new topic to you, so I want to g...

Episode Transcript

Allie Nimmons: Accessibility might be a bit of a new topic to you, so I want to g...

Previous Episode

Toxic Scorekeeping: The case against ‘Five for the Future.’

Recently, the WordPress community has been buzzing with discussion around Five for the Future and the balances of contributing. In this episode of Press the Issue, Rob Howard and Allie Nimmons take a deep dive into the topic and discuss the degree to which Five for the Future serves it's intended purpose.

This podcast was sponsored by LearnDash. Your expertise makes you money doing what you do. Now let it make you money teaching what you do. Create a course with LearnDash. Visit LearnDash.com.

Press the Issue is a production of MasterWP. It was produced by Allie Nimmons. It was hosted and edited by Monet Davenport and mixed and mastered by Teron Bullock. Please visit masterwp.com/presstheissue to find more episodes. Subscribe to our newsletter for more WordPress news at masterwp.com.

Episode Transcript:

Monet Davenport: Welcome to Press the Issue, a podcast for MasterWP, your source for industry insights for WordPress professionals. Get show notes, transcripts and more information about the show at Masterwp.com/presstheissue. Recently, the WordPress community has been buzzing with discussion around Five for the Future and the balances of contributing. In this episode of Press the Issue, Rob Howard and Allie Nimmons take a deep dive into the topic and discuss the degree to which Five for the Future serves its intended purpose.

Rob Howard: Hey Allie, how are you today?

Allie Nimmons: I'm great. How are you, Rob?

Rob Howard: Excellent. It is great to talk to you as always.

Allie Nimmons: Same, I'm really excited. I wanted to talk to you today about your conversation, well, your post that I think has started a larger conversation about Five for the Future and the toxicity of keeping score of WordPress contributing, something that I'm passionate about and curious about as well. So yeah, I had a couple of questions for you.

Rob Howard: That sounds great. Fire away.

Allie Nimmons: So one of the huge things that launched us into this conversation was the fact that Josepha who is the Executive Director of the WordPress open-source project, seems to say and think one thing about Five for the Future. That it's this aspirational thing that people should use to help them begin contributing. And Matt Mullenweg stance as the leader of WordPress, the owner of Automattic and all these things, seems to think something different. Given that there's this disparity right now that exists between the two leaders that we look to, what do you think that, that says overall about the gap between WordPress, the product and WordPress, the Foundation?

Rob Howard: Yeah, that's a great question. I think where I would start is that I'm not necessarily confident that we 100% know what Matt's public position is on this. Because what we are seeing is Josepha is taking a public position that it is an aspirational recommendation. I think Matt would publicly agree with that and I'm sure has many times when asked directly. But then we had this issue or Twitter storm or whatever you want to call it around the question of, does GoDaddy contribute enough to the WordPress open-source projects? Now there's a lot to dig into there, GoDaddy as a competitor of Automattic, which is the for-profit company that Matt Mullenweg owns and Josepha is employed by. So there's a lot to unpack there, but I think what a lot of community members, including myself took away from that episode was that, yes, Five for the Future is presented as aspirational, but also people are watching and keeping track and that can be used against a company who someone wants to present negative information about.

Rob Howard: So I don't know exactly what the motivation was, I know Matt has deleted and apologized for a lot of the statements that he made around GoDaddy but I also think that he still is concerned about people not contributing enough. And he talks about the free rider problem from an economic standpoint and saying, who should be pitching in and how much should they be pitching in to this thing that is a public good? So I think where we end up with a disconnect is, we have two people who are authority figures, it is unclear what their interplay is on this issue, who is ultimately the decision maker or who is the person who is conveying the actual position or the actual rule.

Rob Howard: I mean, I think it makes sense for us to give everyone the benefit of the doubt and say, "We all do want it to be an aspirational goal," which I think would be the healthiest approach. The flip side of that is that sometimes actions speak louder than words and if you say it's aspirational, but then you go after a company who is contributing half a percent instead of four and a half percent or whatever that is, my personal reaction to that was,...

Next Episode

How to Handle WordPress Criticism Online

When you put out your thoughts and opinions online, you’re bound to eventually get opposing views in reply. But what do you do when your professional reputation is tied up in those exchanges? In this episode of Press the Issue, Teron Bullock and Allie Nimmons explore how to navigate negative criticism online.

Episode Transcript

Monet Davenport: Welcome to Press the Issue, a podcast from MasterWP, your source for industry insights for WordPress professionals. Get show notes, transcripts, and more information about the show at Masterwp.com/presstheissue.

Monet Davenport: When you put out your thoughts and opinions online, you’re bound to eventually get opposing views and reply. But what do you do when your professional reputation is tied up in those exchanges? In this episode of Press the Issue, Teron Bullock and Allie Nimmons explore how to navigate negative criticism online.

Teron Bullock: Hi, Allie, how are you doing today?

Allie Nimmons: Hi, Teron, I’m good, how are you?

Teron Bullock: I am well. I know today we have a great conversation in hand. We’re going to talk about criticism on social media and how do you respond properly if you respond at all. So I just want to send this question directly to you. We’re going to get started. And so I guess the first question is, how do you respond to social media criticism if you respond at all?

Allie Nimmons: Yeah. It’s complex, right? Because it depends on a lot of factors. I’ve definitely criticized people on social media and I’ve definitely been criticized. And I think that if you are responding to something that is criticism and not an attack or inflammatory, that’s going to change how you’re going to respond. And I think that somebody is really being nasty or mean or cruel or those kinds of things, I tend to try not to even engage at all with those sorts of things because that’s not... I’m not entering into a conversation, I’m going to be entering into a fight. And a fight is not about let’s get to a resolution, a fight is about who’s going to win. And especially on social media, I don’t think that that’s useful. But if it’s criticism where somebody is saying this was not the strongest choice, or why did you do this this way, or whatever the case may be, that is usually more of something I will try to respond to.

Allie Nimmons: And I mean that happened to me literally today. I was posting about the BlackPress Slack group, I said, “This is a group for Brown/Black people.” And someone was like, “You say that this is for Black people, but then you just used Brown in the tweet, well, what’s the deal?” And they criticized my word choices. And my response was like, “Yeah. No, that’s a great question, and thank you for identifying that.” And I went into detail of more of what I meant and we understood each other. And I was embarrassed because I kind of got called out for not using the correct words to describe people, but I could tell they were coming from a good place. So the criticism was easier for me to respond to and clarify what I was talking about.

Allie Nimmons: But that’s not always the case, right? People get really heated and up in arms and then things can get complicated. And so I think that, if you’re responding to criticism and you’re taking it as that, it’s important to understand where is this person coming from. What are they trying to achieve? Are they just trying to understand me better? Are they unhappy with the choice that I’ve made? Are they hurt? Have they directly been affected by something I’ve done? Does this warrant an apology? I think it’s most important to come at it looking at the other person’s perspective first and then saying, okay, well, what did I mean? How can I bridge that gap and find the resolution? And that’s not always possible in a single tweet. Sometimes it’s a thread. Sometimes it has to go into a DM, but it should start with looking at, how is this person feeling and how can I meet them where they’re at.

Teron Bullock: Absolutely. Let’s pull the layer back a little bit. So when you first received the tweet, you said that you have to make the determination between whether this is criticism or if this is something that’s more harsh. How do you first gauge yourself? Because criticism can hurt just as much as something that is more harsh, and how do you take the emotions out of it to be able to determine which one it is?

Allie Nimmons: Yeah. That’s a good question. I mean, a lot of the times, it’s two things, right? To me, at least. It’s word choice and it’s tone. The person I just talked about in that example, their word choice was very neutral. They were asking me a question, right? It wasn’t like, oh great, this idiot doesn’t even know what they’re talking about. Once it starts to being insults and that kind of stuff, that sets it over the top. And then the tone, which can be really hard on social media. But a lot of times when people will come wit...