In this episode of the Post Status Happiness Hour, Michelle Frechette Danielle Zarcaro, and Isla White discuss their roles and experiences with WordPress Accessibility Day. Michelle, the lead organizer for marketing, expresses her excitement and facilitates the conversation. Danielle, a web developer, emphasizes the importance of web accessibility for all users and shares insights from her three-year involvement. Isla, the project manager, highlights the event’s global impact and the collective responsibility of ensuring web accessibility. The speakers also discuss the significance of the 24-hour event format, the practical aspects of implementing accessibility, and the importance of community and sponsorships in making the event successful.
Top Takeaways:
- Register Early for WP Accessibility Day: The event registration is open, and participants are encouraged to sign up early, even before the speaker list is finalized. This allows attendees to receive updates and stay informed about the event.
- Seek Guidance and Explore Accessibility: Danielle Zarcaro emphasizes the importance of seeking help and asking questions when starting with accessibility. She encourages exploring different aspects of web design and accessibility to enhance knowledge and skills.
- Diverse Perspectives on Accessibility: Isla Waite highlights the value of attending talks from international speakers. Gaining perspectives from around the world can greatly enrich understanding and appreciation of accessibility work.
- Accessibility and Aesthetics: The discussion challenges the misconception that accessible websites are inherently unattractive. Both Danielle and Isla argue that accessibility does not preclude beauty and creativity in design. They stress that accessibility can be integrated with design principles to create functional and appealing websites.
- User Control and Preferences: There’s a focus on allowing users to control their experience, such as providing options for dark mode or animation toggles. This approach respects users’ preferences and improves accessibility by accommodating different needs and settings.
Mentioned In The Show:
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- Danielle Zarcaro (Founder, Overnight Website)
- Isla White (Brand Strategist, Marketing by Design)
- Michelle Frechette (Director of Community Relations, Post Status)
- Olivia Bisset (Intern, Post Status)
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Transcript
Michelle Frechette 00:00:01 Welcome to the Post Status Happiness Hour. I’m here with some of my co-organizers from WordPress Accessibility Day. This is my first year, being one of the organizers, and I’m not sure I probably knew at one point or another. Like what? You know how long you’ve been doing it, but can I let you introduce yourselves? Tell us a little bit about yourselves and, maybe where you live in the world and what you do when you’re not organizing for Accessibility Day. So, Danielle, let’s go with you first.
Danielle Zarcaro 00:00:27 Yeah. So, this is my third year helping out. Obviously each year you sort of get more and more involved. I do, web development. So I’m on the website team as well as helping, you know, wherever I’m needed. I’ll often fill in one of the slots for the day of kind of stuff. I’m in New Jersey. I run, you know, my own, web development studio focusing on accessibility as well as, you know, custom development and existing sites and things like that. So puzzling sort of sort of things. yeah. And and I’m happy to be here.
Michelle Frechette 00:01:02 Nice. Good to see you and Isla.
Isla Waite 00:01:06 Hey. Lovely to be here with you guys. I’m Isla Waite, and I am located in Sacramento, California, just outside of Sacramento. My accent gives away that I’m not from America. I originate from England. I have been involved with WordPress Accessibility Day for three years. Unlike Danielle, who was very smart, I jumped in at the deep end in the first year and the organizers, volunteer organizing role, which was boom. I learned a lot, and I still came back the next year, and it was great fun. And now I’m now I’m heading up the tech and vendors stuff.
Michelle Frechette 00:01:44 Oh very nice. Awesome. It’s so good to have you both here. I am also an organizer, so this is one of those times that I can interview myself as part of the process. But I am Michelle Frechette. As most people know, this is my podcast. This is my live stream, for Post Status. But I’m also the lead organizer for the marketing group. This year, my first year as part of the WP Accessibility Day organizing. And I’m very excited. We have got some amazing people on our organizing team who I mean, the amount of talent in that Zoom room every week is just mind blowing. I’m just so grateful for such an amazing team. But, I’m going to do most of the question asking and let you all answer, especially since this is my first year and you’ve been around the block a little bit more than me when it comes to WP Accessibility Day. So let’s just dive right into some of the questions. We’ll just kind of alternate. So Isla going to ask you to go first on the next question, and then we’ll just go back and forth. So we don’t have any of those awkward silences. So in a nutshell, can you tell us, like what is web accessibility and who does it benefit?
Isla Waite 00:02:47 Is it me first?
Michelle Frechette: Yes.
Isla Waite 00:02:49 You’ve already said that.
Michelle Frechette: I did. It’s okay. Yeah.
Isla Waite: I want to interject with, by the way, Michelle, thank goodness you are here this year because I know the first year we were muddling through marketing with all of us doing a little bit here and a little bit there, and it was, you know, you can imagine. So thank you, thank you.
Michelle Frechette 00:03:07 I’m happy to be here.
Isla Waite 00:03:08 Yeah. So what isweb accessibility and who does it benefit? I mean, gosh, you people have written books on this. But in a nutshell, web accessibility is, you know, the internet for all. At the end of the day, equal access, and equal experiences for every human, whether whatever, however they are in the world and if they have a disability or not. And who does it benefit? Everyone. We all benefit from web accessibility.
Michelle Frechette 00:03:39 Yeah, I think that’s a common misnomer, that web accessibility is only for people who have physical disabilities or who are blind or deaf or, you know, have mobility issues or, dexterity issues. But that’s not quite true, is it?
Isla Waite 00:03:54 No. And I think most people wouldn’t be able to list the things you just said. Most people would automatically assume blind.
Michelle Frechette 00:04:00 Right? Exactly. Danielle, what what would you like to add to that, definition or.
Danielle Zarcaro 00:04:06 Yeah, I usually if I’m going to boil it down to one sentence, it’s usually, ensuring access to for everybody. No matter what any kind of limitations you may have, temporary or otherwise.
Michelle Frechette 00:04:21 My first experience with web accessibility, I didn’t even know what it was. I didn’t like the idea of accessible web. Wasn’t even a thought to me. Right. As somebody whose I wear glasses. But I’d never really struggled with, you know, being able to see I had use of both of my hands. I could hear through my headphones or any other place, any other speaker. However, as I got into my 40s and I was using one theme quite often, I’m not going to throw them under the bus. I’m sure it’s better now than it was, say, ten years ago, but I was using one theme consistently and the default theme font was a gray. And I’m not talking dark charcoal, I’m talking a lighter gray and like a size 8 or 10 font. Right? And I was like, I was 43, 44 years old. And I was like, I can’t see it. And so my first step every time I designed a site was to make the font a little bit bigger and a little bit darker, so that people could actually see it. I didn’t even know I was making a more accessible web.
Danielle Zarcaro 00:05:24 Yeah, and making sure you’re not throwing up additional barriers, because sometimes the things that we do, like, end up preventing people from using whatever they need to use as well, without you even realize that you’re doing it, like zoom, being able to zoom in on a page, you know, you need to be able to do that. So you need to zoom in because you can’t read it. You need to be able to do that.
Michelle Frechette 00:05:42 Yeah, I remember early on, like the local newspaper had a selector at the top where you could select the size of your font. And now, of course, I just will zoom right. Like we’re used to that with, with the way our smartphones work nowadays. But there have been, improvements over the years as far as how we access the web, for sure. and I think having had those experiences as somebody who was just, you know, perhaps getting older eyes, for example, right, not born blind, not, you know, becoming blind, or other having those other kind of issues, but just like gradually going, wait, what? And looking like the person in the meme that’s like, I can’t see it. Jimmy. Right. So that whole, that whole meme. But yeah, for sure. So, I mean, I know a lot of the answers. I wrote the questions, but I’m going to ask you for your answers to the next one. So, Danielle, we’ll start with you. But why do you think having a 24 hour dedicated WordPress Accessibility event is important? And then, the second part after that. So go ahead and answer that part first. So why do you think?
Danielle Zarcaro 00:06:47 Yeah. I think part of accessibility is, for instance, Internationalization, making sure that, you know, you can translate a website into other languages and that you have certain tags available in different languages. So being able to access an event at any time zone is kind of pretty important. So, you know, it’s also helpful for people like me who maybe wake up later and so that, you know, yeah, things maybe are recorded or you can watch later, but there’s really nothing like being able to interact or chat with people who are also there or, you know, there’s something really special to that. And so if you only hold things in, you know, US time or European time, then you’re sort of leaving out this entire, you know, section of the globe. So it’s kind of really this important aspect of accessibility that, you know, it’s not always just disability related. You know, you kind of want to engage all of the community throughout the globe.
Michelle Frechette 00:07:44 I like that it’s not just for one section of the world, it’s for everybody. So I love that. Isla what would you add to that? I’ve got my own thoughts too.
Isla Waite 00:07:52 Yeah, I would agree with all of that. And you know, the internet being borderless, as we just said, it touches everybody. I think a 24 hour event is important because there’s a camaraderie there, that brings people together all at the same moment. And it reminds us all that we’re part of something much bigger than ourselves. And that’s not just part of the accessibility community. It’s part of humans. And that these same challenges, identical challenges, touch everyone all over the world. So by being a part of sharing the moving of the needle, you know, with, with people all over the world, that’s huge.
Michelle Frechette 00:08:40 I would add too, that just like accessibility isn’t just for people with disabilities because it can benefit everybody. There are people who like to work at 3:00 in the morning and live in New York state.
Michelle Frechette 00:08:52 And so there you go, see, and I’m also one of them. I’m often on or at least awake very late into the early wee hours of the morning. And so having something that fits my schedule, not just fits my time zone, is also something that I think benefits other people. Having also done 24 hour events in the past, I’ve discovered also, like you said, there’s also a camaraderie amongst the organizers, who are communicating like backstage, if you will, globally about that whole thing. And there’s just, I don’t know, there’s a feeling of really accomplishing something really great for other people, in a global way. That way. What can people of. Danielle, we’ll go back to you. What can people expect to learn during this event?
Danielle Zarcaro 00:09:40 Yeah, I mean, the agenda is going to give you the the specifics of everything that you can, you know, read into, but pretty much a little something for everybody. I know that kind of sounds generic, but it really is nice because you don’t have to worry about, you know? Oh, well, we’re only going to cover things for beginners. And then, so, you know, someone who’s doing this all the time is like, well, then it’s not for me because I’ll be bored. or I’m teaching other people in the comments, you know, then you also have these advanced things. You have really specific things about how to do this one very specific thing. But then you have this like sort of general, how does this affect, you know, the society as a whole, like, you know, how does how our, you know, legislation’s going versus, you know, the actual practical things that you can put into, you know, into practice on your own website. So it’s sort of really just, you know, what can you expect to learn? Something. You’ll take something away whether, you know, no matter what it is, you’ll learn something. So there is going to be something for you to take. Yeah.
Michelle Frechette 00:10:40 Yeah. I love that. Isla you what do you think people can expect to learn other than what Daniel’s already said?
Isla Waite 00:10:45 Yeah, all of that. And it’s something and something for everyone. And you know, I’m I’m different from Danielle and that I’m, I’m not a developer or a coder. I’ve dabbled. And then I left that to the smart people. I am in the project management zone and I now in my own business. So I’m kind of coming at it from a very different perspective. All of the perspectives are important, and I think that’s what we try to push through Michelle the marketer, like there is literally something for everyone. You don’t have to be in the code. I think you can expect to learn things you would you would not have expected to learn. You will learn things that you you’ll be surprised by. And what I think is most fun about all of this is it’s so different to other conferences in that the majority, if not all of the people speaking have probably not spoken before. I’d say the majority have not presented before, but our evaluation process of, you know, the final speakers, is, is really thorough. So we’re looking for people who have, you know, figured out their own processes, figured out, like solve their own challenges in producing accessible things or working, working out how to work with clients or working out how to change the culture in their business. And they’re bringing that to the table and saying, hey, I want to share this with everybody. When does that happen these days? Who wants to share all the stuff that they’ve just discovered? Which is why I think it’s so important because it’s it’s grassroots people, for the most part, who have not done big presentations. And you can perhaps learn more from them.
Michelle Frechette 00:12:23 But looking at and I know that I don’t think the schedule is out yet, so it’s still a little bit of a secret. It’ll be.
Isla Watie: Soon. Very, very soon.
MIchelle Frechette: Because because I’ve been I’ve been working on getting the speaker cards and everything like lined up and in the back end of things. But, looking at the speaker lineup, these amazing people have such amazing pedigrees too right? Like I’m seeing a lot of UX design accessibility experts, things like that, that even if they don’t have a lot of speaking experience, they know their stuff. Like, I’m super excited to hear them talk for sure.
Isla Waite 00:12:55 Yeah, same.
Michelle Frechette 00:12:59 I put together processes for myself. I am a mobility challenged person, right? So I use a scooter when I’m out and about. And I use a cane in my home and I think several steps ahead because I know that if I have to walk down to one end of my home, to the to the bedroom. But I forgot something in the kitchen. That’s too many steps. That’s too many steps for me. I’d have to I have to think about. So I have to think several steps ahead. And I think that that is also what we do when we are thinking about accessibility on our websites. We should be thinking ahead. We should be thinking about all the things that we can do to make sure that they are what they need to be, and not trying to go backwards later in retrofit. Like, one of the things that I’ve always done is said when you put your pictures the very least right when you put a picture on your website, add the alt text at that moment, because saying you’re going to go back later and add the all, all the alt text, you’re never going to do that, because just also going back and just putting it in the media library doesn’t actually add it to the pages that you’ve had post that you’ve put it on. So you can’t literally go back and do it quickly and easily. which brings me to a question I didn’t put in the chat. I apologize, but how easy is accessibility, you know? Right. I just thought of it. Sometimes I think of these things on as like as I’m going. How easy would you say accessibility is? And of course, I’m not talking about overlays because that is not a good way to go about things, but, yeah. Do you have to be do you have to be a developer to have an accessible website? That’s a good question. we’re getting some comments from Adrian, and she says
Isla Waite: Yeah, I bet.
Danielle Zarcaro 00:14:38 Do you want to start with the non developer to answer.
Isla Waite 00:14:40 Oh, yeah.
Danielle Zarcaro 00:14:42 And then, yeah, I.
Isla Waite 00:14:45 Think I’ll make all the bloopers and Daniel can fix it.
Michelle Frechette 00:14:48 There you go.
Isla Waite 00:14:50 Is it easy? You know that? Is it easy? In some respects, yes. And in some respects, no. Can I can that be an answer?
MIchelle Frechette: Absolutely.
Isla Waite 00:15:01 I think there are visual things that anyone who owns a website can do, as long as they are aware. So bringing awareness to people is the biggest point. And that’s another reason for the conference. But things to do with color contrast and things to do with layout and like organizing a hierarchy that might be a little advanced for some. But, you know, as long as it’s logical, that’s going to help. Things to do with not having crazy motion, things that people can’t stop and start on their own accord. And then you’re into video transcripts and that kind of thing. But there is plenty that somebody can do to stop a toe in the water and realize, oh, this isn’t scary. Actually it’s totally doable. And I understand it because I’m also squinting at that light gray font that I can’t see. So maybe I’ll just make it a bit darker. You know, it’s once you start doing it, you’re like, yeah, of course.
Michelle Frechette 00:15:59 Yeah. Now I will say we started with a non developer, but you gave the developer answer, which is it depends.
Isla Waite 00:16:05 I’m sorry.
Danielle Zarcaro 00:16:08 Well no I mean. I can give I can give a much more technical process answer. So even though it’s maybe a more developer answer, I, you know, I can get into the weeds a little bit. I sort of like to talk about it in processes. Right. So if we’re talking about ease of implementation, that’s going to be way easier to do at the beginning and thinking through things. So like color choices. Right? Okay. That’s really easy to do because I don’t need to be a designer or developer I can plug these colors into a tool and it’ll tell me and then I can adjust from there. So like, there’s certain things that if you’re if you have it in the back of your head through everything you’re doing, then the things you do later are going to be a lot easier relatively. Then it’s about phases from there. So you implement what you know you can get right, which is like font sizes and, you know, colors and line heights. And so you do what you can do to make it, you know, a great site that you can still use.
Danielle Zarcaro 00:17:04 That’s great. And, you know, everyone loves coming to. And then as you want to implement these more advanced features, then you can insert, you know, a video that you can add a transcript to and make sure it doesn’t autoplay. Then you can get into those more advanced things. But so it’s not that you can’t do stuff, it’s just that like, oh, hey, I want to add this feature. Is this something I have to take special consideration for or just throw it on here? And because like, even like motion and animation, you have to know enough about how to test for it in order to see if your tool does it right. So you have to know how to turn your prefers reduced motion on on your computer in order to see if your builder respects that, because that’s sort of the bare minimum. So there’s these like little considerations you can do. There’s a bunch of tools out there that will help guide you through the process. And then when you have an existing site that you’re trying to sort of retrofit accessibility, that’s when I get into sort of the phase work where it’s like, okay, let’s tackle these sort of top level, you know, easy, quick start sort of things. And then we can get into these, you know, deeper things. So it’s it’s it doesn’t have to be intimidating I guess is is the answer.
Michelle Frechette 00:18:11 Yeah I’m it’s almost like Adrian is here with us the, the way we should have we should have had you on the show too. The the basics of designing content are easy, but you need to know what you’re looking for, so you need to have a little bit of education. It’s not that it’s difficult. It’s that it can be a little time consuming. and I think back to like, how many photos. Don’t apologize, Adrian. I say she’s like, sorry. No. Don’t apologize. It’s all good. We love it. We love it. I think back to how many inaccessible sites I’ve put out in the world in the past, right? And that most of them don’t exist anymore because those customers moved on to something else or whatever. And how when I was first learning to say alt text in Twitter, for example, how it would be like, I’m not even gonna post a picture because I don’t want to take the time to write it out. Right? But then like, realize that’s such the wrong attitude. Right? The right attitude is if I were to share a photo, share a photo, but write a quick description, it doesn’t have to be a book, but write a quick description so that my friends like Alex can know what it is that I’m putting out there. And so that’s.
Danielle Zarcaro 00:19:19 And the more you do something, the more second nature becomes right. That initial hurdle. And then as soon as you do it, you’re like, oh. And then you could just sort of spit something out and it’s just like, you know, just the same as writing the post itself. It’s just you just do it.
Michelle Frechette 00:19:32 Exactly. Just part of it just becomes part of your whole process. now, I don’t know who might know the answer to this, so better. So I’m going to let you kind of toss a coin on this one. But this year’s keynote is Lainey Feingold. who could tell us a little bit about her and what her session is going to cover? I think Danielle is pulling up the website right now, which is good.
Danielle Zarcaro 00:19:54 Yeah, I don’t know about her session specifically. I don’t remember what that is, but she’s basically, you know, the source of all things sort of lawyerly when it comes to accessibility. So she stays on top of all the latest, like, you know, cases themselves, the outcomes of them, what that means for the, you know, community at large. So we have somebody helping us out, you know, accessibility is a civil right. So the digital accessibility legal landscape for the WordPress community. So, you know, what what all of these. So as sort of time goes on, we’re going to get more and more, you know, sort of legal type things like, oh, I don’t want to get sued, but you know what? So what does that actually mean? You know, what does that mean for us as website creators? What does that mean for us as website consumers? And, you know, how do we sort of navigate that?
Michelle Frechette 00:20:45 Yeah, I think about the different reasons that somebody might think about making their site accessible. The first is like, I want it to be good SEO. The second is I don’t want to get sued. The best is I want people to get to my page. They’re going to get to my site and be able to use it. Right. But if if you don’t care about the third one, at least care about the first two so that the other people still get the benefit of it is basically.
Danielle Zarcaro 00:21:08 Yeah. I mean, you have people that are, you know, you have to convince sometimes when you’re part of a larger company. And so I typically will fall on the fact that like, because they’ll, they’ll ask for some kind of data. Right. Well, how many people are coming that need such and such. And it’s like, well, you don’t know. And that’s the point. And maybe they don’t know. much like I just, answered somebody’s question about like, how would you, you know, make the workplace a better place for yourself, like what kind of accommodations you need? And so my point was, sometimes people don’t know accommodations that they need because they don’t know that it’s available to them.
Danielle Zarcaro 00:21:42 And so if you make the website accessible in this one way and they’re like, oh my god, wow, that was so much easier to use, then they can start to, you know, it’s it’s sort of just you’re you’re doing it for the betterment of the people coming to your site. It’s not necessarily that you’re targeting this one, you know, subset of the population. You’re kind of just, you know, helping people use your site in general. So it’s I try to be more general about it. I as much as I’d like to, to think that everybody cares about the people coming to their site, I try to take a little bit of that while you’re doing the wrong thing out of it, because then you’re, you know, passing judgment on people. And I try not to do that. So I try to just, you know, give people the convincing things without trying to, you know, tell them how I feel about them.
Michelle Frechette 00:22:26 Exactly. It’s like I’m not judging you, but. Let’s let’s make it better. I’m not saying it’s bad, but let’s make it better.
Danielle Zarcaro 00:22:34 Yeah, and it’s all those reasons. There’s a million reasons why you should. And so why not?
Michelle Frechette 00:22:40 Yeah, absolutely.
Isla Waite 00:22:41 Hey, on the Lainey topic. I, I just want to throw out that I. I respect her quite a lot. I don’t respect all lawyers, but I respect her quite a lot because she’s all about, not being a shock and being a dolphin. And she writes about that on her website, so if you feel like going to read something. It’s worth a look. And she has written a book which I’m currently reading called Structured Negotiation. Look for her book. and she’s kind of a legal rebel in that she’s trying to say, less lawsuits, more negotiation. And that’s what I love about it, because living in California right now, this whole topic is very turbulent. I’m a business owner. I’m feeling that turbulence. we just had a bill that died in its second version. So it was AB 9- something. Now it was AB 1757 and that just died. So a version of it’s going to come back. and Lainey has recently posted on LinkedIn some stuff, so I follow her closely for her perspective on things like art and things like that.
Danielle Zarcaro 00:23:45 Yeah. Because like, you don’t as much as you don’t want people to get sued and all that. I’m I’m not totally against the idea of having some kind of, you know, rules and regulations to follow. But if we if we take a look at, like the privacy and, and the cookie banners and all that stuff that happened because of, you know, wanting to be able to tell people when they’re being tracked and then we just sort of implement these blanket cookie statements, and then sometimes they don’t actually even do anything. And so it just sort of creates this chaos. So like I love the idea.
Isla Waite 00:24:13 And then Google says let’s just do it at the browser level. Never mind.
Danielle Zarcaro 00:24:16 Yeah, right. It’s like, you know, and then like what cookie counts and this and that. So there’s all these like nuances of things that, you know, I would love to have guidelines that are rather than just conforming to these, you know, standards. I’d love to have some kind of actual thing for us to be told that we should follow. But I’m totally against just, like, superfluous, just suing people because you can.
Isla Waite 00:24:39 Oh, we could talk for hours. I’m like.
Danielle Zarcaro 00:24:43 I feel all the ways about all the things.
Isla Waite 00:24:46 I don’t know if you know, but in California, the bill was going to hold developers accountable.
Danielle Zarcaro 00:24:53 Yeah. Which is hard.
Isla Waite 00:24:54 Yeah. Fully, fully liable if somebody found a barrier on a website. So even if somebody else made a plug in and somebody else made a plug in.
Danielle Zarcaro 00:25:02 Yeah.
Isla Waite 00:25:02 You end up sharing that lawsuit with 55 people. Even if it doesn’t go to court, you’ve still got to settle.
Michelle Frechette 00:25:07 Yeah.
Isla Waite 00:25:08 Anyway, that’s a whole other topic. So I’m going to get off that..
Danielle Zarcaro 00:25:13 It’s fascinating and it’s amazing to to hear from on pretty much anything she ever talks about.
Isla Waite 00:25:20 Lainey is great! That’s what we’re going to say.
Michelle Frechette 00:25:21 I’m looking forward to her session very much. Absolutely. Okay. We’ll go with, I think we went with Isla first last time. We’ll go with Danielle. Now, why do you, as an organizer, choose to put so much time and energy into this event? And secondly, if you want to talk about it, has as web accessibility impacted you or others that you know personally, is there a personal stake in it?
Danielle Zarcaro 00:25:43 So why do I volunteer my time? I, I feel like it’s all for the betterment of the community. I can’t do what I do without the the value that others have brought me. Brought me, you know, either from sharing their information or walkthroughs or articles or their experiences. And so for me to be able to not just like somebody needs a site that’s accessible and then they pay me and I do it. I love being able to provide some kind of support to other people because I’m not I, I spoken at sessions and I but I’m not like an organizer. I’m not great at that side of things. So I’d love to like, do something like this too. But I can never put something like this on myself. So I love the idea of being able to help other people sort of bring this to a much larger audience and make it accessible. And, you know, just I love seeing other people do stuff like this. And so why wouldn’t I also want to contribute in that way as well?
Michelle Frechette 5 00:26:47 I love that.
Danielle Zarcaro 00:26:47 So I just, I just and then you get to like, hang around with a bunch of cool people that feel the same way as you do. Like there’s not there’s something to be said when you have that sort of base level of, you know, thing. I don’t know what it is. Anytime there’s community around something, there’s that like level of understanding and it just feels really nice. So.
Isla Waite 00:27:08 It’s an energy.
Danielle Zarcaro 00:27:09 Yeah, yeah. And I mean, yeah, even if I didn’t have a personal stake in it, I just feel really strongly about it. I do, I mean, I do in my own ways. I’m neurodivergent. I think my astigmatism has something to do with animation. I don’t have any confirmation on that, but I don’t know if it’s just because I’m on computers all the time, but I’m at this middle spot where I don’t necessarily want to turn animations off on my computer as a whole, but like, websites can get way too much. And so I really like turning it off on websites. So I’d love for like, browsers to have that option. But so I’m, I’m big on on that, especially on phones. Like I’ll have to leave a site or, or hope that I can scroll to the bottom, let all the animations go, and then I can scroll back up and do it. So I really hate when it like, runs and then undoes itself and then runs again. Pulling animation for me in motion. That’s personal. I think there has to be other things that I’m not thinking of. I don’t know about other ways that people use it.
Danielle Zarcaro 00:28:12 I mean, you know, you have parents and grandparents and stuff that use bigger text and, you know, utilize all these different accessibility things. But, yeah, a bunch of stuff for me for neurodivergent vision. I like being able to, you know, turn on dark mode because, you know, of sensory things and all that stuff. So, yeah, for, for personally, it’s mostly related to any kind of neuro divergence, but, yeah, I don’t, you know, so I, I don’t have it like a blind, you know, cousin or anything like that. But, you know, that’s not to say that that won’t, I won’t ever. You know.
Michelle Frechette 00:28:47 Adrian has a comment regarding some of what you said was that as her Dad always says, pay it back when you can and when you can’t pay it forward. And that’s I think that kind of sums up what you what you were just saying I love it.
Michelle Frechette: Sorry. You keep getting cut off Isla
Speaker 5 00:28:58 If I’m on my left.
Danielle Zarcaro 00:29:00 That’s all right. If I’m gonna. You know, need help someday I’d like, you know, I want somebody to be like me there. You know? I’d want to know that somebody was there, you know, having keeping me in mind.
Michelle Frechette 00:29:12 Yeah. What about you, Isla?
Isla Waite 00:29:16 Remind me the question.
Michelle Frechette 00:29:17 That’s okay. Why do you. Why do. You choose? Why do you choose to put so much time and energy into this event? And is there a personal connection for you, a reason that you are so interested in accessibility?
Isla Waite 00:29:29 Yeah. I choose it because I love it. And I didn’t know the first year that I was going to love it. But again, it, you know, like Daniel says, it comes back to there’s an underlying that undercurrent of something when you’re with these people. But even just in Slack, you know, it’s there’s an energy there and that that can feed me, you know, to get through my afternoon with clients or whatever. So there’s a there’s a selfish thing to that, I think, like this. This feeds me, but in a really great way. So, you know, and I know actually, I can reach out to any of these people with a random question about basically anything, and I’m going to get a response. I’m not speaking into a void, like, and I’ve worked on other conferences and volunteer, things where three days go by, you know, and I am not perfect at responding by any means, but sometimes you wonder. Is that person engaged? But I think there’s no question. Yeah, there’s no question with these organizers that these people are engaged. Certainly at this point along in the proceedings, you know, in the event is in not very long, a month and a half or something?
Michelle Frechette 00:30:38 Yeah. Yeah.
Isla Waite 00:30:39 So yeah, I, I do it because it feeds my soul. I love it, I love that, Yeah. is there a, personal reason? Yeah. My family tends to have the invisible disabilities. And right, right now, my dad has Alzheimer’s.
Isla Waite 00:31:05 And that began a while ago. and in the early days when he could still use a device which he’d never been very good at, but he had a little tablet, and he could do things, you know, you could do the things you wanted to do. And he came to me. I started to see him struggle with that. And so I think I have a, you know, a my nana had Alzheimer’s too. I have a very special place for the aging population in all of this, because as we get more progressive and more AI and more this and more that, I do feel like they’re the generation that gets left behind. So that’s that’s probably my biggest motivation. I don’t I don’t like that. Yeah. It hurts to to feel like people I love are going to get left behind. So yeah. So that’s probably my internal motivation.
Michelle Frechette 00:31:49 That makes a lot of sense. For me, you know, I do a lot of work with Underrepresented In Tech and underrepresented-ness and try to help be, you know, help people be more represented. And of course, I don’t represent everybody because I, I only can represent who I am. But what I thought about the fact that there are places that I’ve, I do not have access to because of physical disability. I, you know, a few years ago at WordCamp US, I wrote a big article called Five Days Without a Shower because I had so many places that were not accessible to me and that were very difficult to traverse, and I was in tears because I couldn’t like access. I got stuck in a bathroom like those kinds of things. There are places I’ve been to as a child that I would love to go back to. There’s, there’s a beautiful gorge walk in Watkins Glen that can’t be retrofitted. I mean, it’s it’s a nature thing, right? And I see that come up, like, in TikTok and, and videos and think, I wish I could go back and appreciate it again because I can’t walk those places. And I thought if my coming to a building with no curb cuts and no accessible doors probably feels a lot like what it would feel like to come to a website and not have access the way I don’t have access physically.
Michelle Frechette 00:33:05 And so for me, that’s my impetus. Right? So, I am still learning. I am a newb at figuring all of it out, but I am passionate about it because of just experiences that I’ve had in the past. Not web related, but Michelle related. Right. And so, so for me, that is one of the impetus and to make sure that everybody has an opportunity to access things. So it’s pretty much who sets it to so here’s a good question. I wish we had Bette for this one because she’s like, I could talk to the money the best. But. So we pay a stipend to our speakers and give them swag, I think. Danielle, I think you’re wearing our t-shirt there.
Danielle Zarcaro 00:33:46 Yeah, yeah, I’m wearing. Let me stand up. my shoes.
Isla Waite: I’m wearing last year’s This is last years shirt.
Michelle Frechette 00:33:51 And mines in the wash, so.
Danielle Zarcaro 00:33:56 Yeah, this year is, orange. It’s got the colon focus with the, the box around it. And then it says it’s a feature not a bug. And then WordPress Accessibility Day 2024.
Michelle Frechette 00:34:06 I love it.
Isla Waite 00:34:07 Because we all have such a great sense of humor.
Michelle Frechette 00:34:09 Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So we give swag and we pay a stipend to our speakers. And we know that having an event like this is not free. Anyway. The labor may be, but there’s all kinds of technology and things that we need to include as well. How? I mean, I know it’s weird to ask this because I know the answers, but I’ll have you answer them. How do we afford it? Like, what are we doing? How are we offsetting the cost? I don’t remember who went first last time. So one of you jump in?
Isla Waite 00:34:41 We need those sponsorships. You know, they’re on the website, and we have filled a good number of them. I think we’re still looking maybe for some bronze. I can’t remember Bet would know. No, but, Yeah, my responses as well at all helps. so obviously I, you know, a gold or platinum sponsors, they are wonderful. And we literally couldn’t do it without them. Same for silver and bronze and micro. I mean, everyone gets their name up there right on social media or somewhere. it’s a great place to be seen. So yeah, that’s where we get the money from.
Danielle Zarcaro 00:35:13 I think, if I’m not mistaken, you can become a micro sponsor. When you sign up to attend.
Michelle Frechette 00:35:19 You can.
Isla Waite00:35:20 You can.
Danielle Zarcaro 00:35:21 It’s super easy. You could just sort of check a box. Yeah. I mean, yeah, that’s the main way. Yeah.
Isla Waite 00:35:27 Yeah.
Michelle Frechette 00:35:28 June coming into the clinch with all the information in the chat, I love that. Bronze level sponsorships are available to September 10th. We will take, an a Microsoft. if Microsoft micro level sponsorship. I like what. I clicked something, I thought I was clicking off, I clicked her next message. I was like, completely lost myself there. Micro level sponsorship is available at registration, as Danielle said. And if you can’t even afford that, but you want to contribute, we do take donations as well. You know, and a little bit helps us put it on, even.
Danielle Zarcaro 00:35:59 Even sharing about it, telling somebody about it. I mean, you don’t you know, people can’t come if they don’t know about it. And I mean, you know, the money also goes towards, you know, we have sign language interpreters and live captioning and all of the sort of access related things are.
Isla Waite 00:36:13 All and then the post-production, so that we can get it up on YouTube and share it forever.
Danielle Zarcaro 00:36:16 And translate it and all of that. Yeah.
Michelle Frechette 00:36:19 So we’re we also translate it into other languages, which I think is important. Right. So that’s also.
Isla Waite 00:36:25 That’s new this year thanks to Joni. Shout out to Joni.
Michelle Frechette 00:36:29 Very exciting to be able to, to share with people outside of the English language as well and American Sign Language, so for sure. Okay. So Danielle, when is Accessibility Day this year.
Danielle Zarcaro 00:36:41 Accessibility Day is, because I know this answer right off the top of my head, I can tell you it’s October 9th to 10th, depending on your. Depending on your on your timezone.
Michelle Frechette 00:36:56 We didn’t hear your keyboard at all.
Danielle Zarcaro 00:36:58 I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Michelle Frechette 00:37:03 I love it. October 9th and 10th. Isla, what does it cost to attend?
Isla Waite 00:37:10 It’s free.
Michelle Frechette: It’s free. That’s right. It’s free.
Isla Waite 00:37:11 But you might want to buy a t-shirt. And since Danielle is modeling it, if you can see it, it is rather gorgeous. It is focus. It’s a feature, not a bug. Everybody needs that t-shirt.
Danielle Zarcaro 00:37:28 While running and you’ll be able to be seen.
Isla Waite Yeah. That’s right.
Michelle Frechette: That’s true.
Danielle Zarcaro 00:37:38 Walking, running or driving or was it, hitchhiking?
Isla Waite 00:37:40 You could pretend to be a traffic cone. Make sure all those driving.
Danielle Zarcaro 00:37:44 I do like it. I have shorts that are the same color, so I had to make sure I didn’t put those on today, because that would be too much.
Michelle Frechette 00:37:50 I will put the legal disclaimer in that while it is orange, it is not reflective.
Danielle Zarcaro 00:37:54 No, no, right. Don’t actually stand in the middle of a street.
Isla Waite: But wouldn’t that be awesome if it was?
Danielle Zarcaro 00:37:59 I love glow in the dark things. We should definitely have some kind of glow in the dark.
Isla Waite00:38:05 I would love to see. Yeah, like a hologram thing, but that sounds very inaccessible to me.
Michelle Frechette: It does.
Danielle Zarcaro00:38:10 That’s for sure. We’re like those shirts that changed colors. Oh, yeah. The sunlight was those.Somebody could, like, put their hand on you, and then it would change color.
Michelle Frechette 00:38:21 Under the heat? Yeah. I used to have fingernails that did that.
Isla Waite00:38:23 Because everyone’s supposed to put their hands on people. That’s not at all creepy.
Danielle Zarcaro 00:38:26 No like you’re siblings or, you know, you’re this way. If you if you got, like, if your siblings smacked you, then you have proof. You go run to your parents, say, look, look, they hit me.
Michelle Frechette 00:38:38 That’s right. But but Covid protocols have put that right out the window.
Isla Waite 00:38:43 Yeah, yeah yeah, yeah. Do not try to.
Danielle Zarcaro 00:38:45 Change my shirt color.
Michelle Frechette 00:38:48 Which which is another benefit of this conference is you can’t catch Covid from any of the other attendees because you’re doing it from the comfort of wherever you set up your computer. So.
Isla Waite 00:38:58 You can wear your pajamas.
Michelle Frechette 00:38:59 Yes, you should wear your pajamas. That’s right. I joked that I’ll be wearing my pajamas from the waist down, but I will look very professional from the waist up.
Danielle Zarcaro 00:39:07 Yeah. So many, many people these days from. It doesn’t even have to be the waist up just from.
Michelle Frechette 00:39:14 Mid chest higher.
Danielle Zarcaro 00:39:15 Yeah yeah yeah yeah.
Michelle Frechette 00:39:18 And the question I was going to ask but I have it ready for us in a, in a banner is that you can learn more and register registrations open. We will be forthcoming with the speaker list. But you want to register even before you know who the speakers are. Let’s go to 2024 dot WP Accessibility day. Accessibility dot day. Sorry I said it wrong. So that’s 2024 dot WP accessibility dot day and that will get you.
Danielle Zarcaro 00:39:44 If you sign up now then you can you’ll get updates and stuff so you don’t have to remember yourself. You’ll get you’ll get all the all the info.
Michelle Frechette 00:39:50 Exactly you.
Isla Waite 00:39:51 Let the computer remember for you. That’s the world we live in.
Danielle Zarcaro: All the time.
Michelle Frechette 00:39:55 And and our, our biggest fan today. Adrian says yay Joni for all of the translations. We adore you, Danielle. She has orange nail polish to match the t-shirt. Okay. And then she corrected this. So yes, I love it, I love it, I love it again. I’ll put that up back up on the floor on the, the bottom of the floor at the bottom of the screen here, which is learn more and register at 2024 dot WP Accessibility dot Day. Any final thoughts before we wrap this up, Danielle, to you.
Danielle Zarcaro 00:40:26 Um, if you’re ever not sure about anything, find somebody to ask. There’s a ton of people who are ready and willing to guide you in the right direction. I do videos and posts and all kinds of so many people do all kinds of stuff, so it’s super easy, to start your journey started anywhere, pick a thing and get into it. And, it’s just it’s a lot of fun.
Michelle Freche3tte 00:40:50 Absolutely. Isla.
Isla Waite 00:40:52 Exactly that. And also, once you’ve registered for a WordPress Accessibility Day, make a point of finding a speaker who isn’t in your country and try and attend, or at least watch on YouTube later. What it is that they have to say because finding perspectives from around the world are just so valuable. Honestly, for me, that has enhanced my knowledge and my appreciation for this work to the umpteenth level. So if you can find somebody out, you know, outside of your geography, I highly recommend that.
Michelle Frechette 00:41:26 Okay. If one more question that I didn’t even prep you for, but it’s based on something that I know it’s scandalous. Something that Bet posted today, asking a question of do you believe that accessible websites can still be beautiful? Or are all web accessible websites just ugly?
Isla Waite 00:41:46 Oh no!
Danielle Zarcaro 00:41:47 A whole presentation on this at WordCamp. Designing with Accessibility. It’s totally it’s so I’m somebody that really loves parameters and then I can, like, just go to town based on those. So I love being able to know, okay, I have to do this, this, this and this. And then given those guidelines, what do I have to do in order to make it work or make it nice? Yeah. There’s a million things that you can do. There’s trends you should probably stay away from, but that could be the fun in taking this thing that everybody’s doing and doing it in a way that is like, I love that kind of stuff, and it’s so creative. And so yeah, no, I hard disagree.
Isla Waite 00:42:30 Yeah, I know I’m right there with you in the parameters. It’s just such a great point. And I think obviously beautiful is very subjective. So what what does.
Michelle Frechette: So true.
Isla Waite 00:42:38 The hardest conversations I have ever had. And thank you. Not thankfully not too many, but I with designers who want to be the creative selves and how do we want we don’t want to take that away from them. Just recently I had one going, oh, I don’t want to implement any of that it’s terrible. But that’s, you know, we we all know that that’s not the truth. And we know the reasons why we need to do it, and it’s just back down to education.
Danielle Zarcaro 00:43:04 And if that’s your instinct, the important, most important thing you can do is, is ask yourself why or have somebody else ask yourself why. Start to explore why you’re having that reaction to it. Because there’s something that you learned when you didn’t know anything. And and you’re, you know, you asked, you know, oh, this is good design. This is bad design. This is what you should do. Okay. Well, why what makes that nice? Well, why don’t you want to implement these things? Do you think it’s limiting? And if so, you know, how can I challenge those, you know, ideas that I have about this particular thing? Because the the, the limitations are really only the ones that you put on yourself.
Danielle Zarcaro 00:43:42 These are just how do you make it? You want you want as many people as possible. We’re not talking about a pet project that you like launch for your family that you can have on, you know, wherever. We’re talking about this thing that you want people to access and see. And so, yeah, I think the most important thing to do is not take things personally. it’s not a personal attack on you or your skill or, you know, whatever. It’s just this like thing to sort of broaden your mind and, and start to ask yourself the hard questions. Basically.
Isla Waite 00:44:08 I think if it’s not functional, it’s not design and accessibility is a part of functional, functionality. And if it’s not functional, it’s art.
Danielle Zarcaro 00:44:18 I was I was reading about, like sort of abandoned buildings and architecture. And so it was this like thing about how you want to preserve this. I think it was a school or something. You want to preserve this thing, this architecture, this thing that somebody built, and it’s part of its history. And so how much can you change of it? But nobody’s using it. It’s sitting there just empty. And so if you don’t maintain a building, it no longer becomes that good architecture. So what are your choices here? Leave it empty and not fit for purpose and leaking and just totally unusable. All for the sake of, you know, good architecture, or do you make it something that somebody’s going to use for the purpose of being a building like. So it’s just sort of this it’s an eternal argument, I think. And I think if you start to ask yourself that those big questions about what is the main purpose that I’m doing here, making a thing that I want somebody to come visit? Well, you know, there’s some concessions you’re gonna have to make. And how do I do that creatively?
Michelle Frechette 00:45:20 Yeah, some people could argue that a ramp is an eyesore. I would argue that it’s a thing of beauty because it gives me access to places. So. Yeah, absolutely. And also, Danielle, I want you to be very proud of me that it’s been at least five years since I’ve used parallax on any web design.
Danielle Zarcaro 00:45:37 I love it, I love it. And there’s way to do stuff like that too. You just have to respect people. If to me, animation is one of the hardest things because you don’t want to give too many options for people upfront, but if you’re leaning heavy in that animation, give somebody like a toggle button at the top, let them turn it off and give them a different experience. Maybe that’s controversial. I don’t really know. But I think because you want to respect their initial preferences. But if you’re leaning heavy into that, let somebody turn it off. You can still have your fun little scrolling thing, but make it big right up front. Kind of like dark mode. People really feel strongly one way or the other about that too.
Michelle Frechette 00:46:13 Oh, I hate, I hate dark mode.
Danielle Zarcaro 00:46:16 Dark mode. Give somebody a toggle so you don’t maybe don’t always want to, you know, lean on those browser.
Isla Waite 00:46:21 I think you’re touching on the universal principles of design for education. And I only know about this because I just did the CPAC.
Danielle Zarcaro 00:46:29 I don’t know, I don’t know. That sounds great.
Isla Waite 00:46:32 So, you know, in essence, it’s give many options so that people can pick and sort of choose how they interact with the thing.
Danielle Zarcaro 00:46:41 I think within reason, because then you get into those overlay things where you’re starting to like give people too many options and then you’re not considering anybody and you’re saying, here you do it. It’s more like when you have this, when you’re leaning heavy into this 1 or 2 things. Yeah, yeah. Like the WordPress Accessibility Day website gives options for light and dark mode. So it’s like you can control this thing that, you know, we’re doing for you. You know, it just you want to enable it for everybody rather than just somebody who happens to know where they’re setting is. So I have I have a, an animation toggle because I don’t again, that’s one of my things. So I’m like, no, if I’m going to have these things automatically playing or on scroll, I have to give somebody the opportunity to stop.
Michelle Frechette 00:47:22 Absolutely. And the worst, my worst experience is, I’m not married anymore. But what I was is I would be online at night, he’d be sound asleep. I’d land on a web page that suddenly just started blasting music like, don’t do that either.
Danielle Zarcaro 00:47:38 Or videos. Or.
Michelle Frechette 00:47:40 Yes, exactly.
Danielle Zarcaro 00:47:41 But that’s why that’s why. Color preferences are important. Because people will sometimes. I mean, phones are so smart nowadays that they can put on different modes for different times of day. So somebody is in bed and they want dark mode when they’re in bed, and then you show them a white website. That’s bright.
Michelle Frechette 00:47:55 Oh, yeah, that is right. Very true, very true. Well, I want to thank you both for taking some time to be here today and answer all of my burning questions. We’ll put this up one more time. Please come register. Come be there. You don’t have to spend 24 hours. That’s. The other thing is, you don’t have to spend 24 hours in front of your computer. You can pick and choose the talk. Do you want to listen to. And we record them and we put them out later for you to consume in different ways. So if you if you want to hear a talk that’s happening when you should be asleep and you want to be asleep, you can hear it later, we promise. So again, you can learn more and register at 2024 dot WP Accessibility dot Day. Danielle, Isla, thank you so much for being here today. Your passion is awesome. Oh wait, I’ll put it back. Go ahead.
Isla Waite00:48:40 Read it, read it again.
Michelle Frechette 00:48:42 Learn more and register at 2024 dot WP Accessibility dot Day. And if you’re listening and you didn’t see that she was directing me of where to speak at the bottom of the of the page there. So the.
Danielle Zarcaro 5 00:48:55 The little bouncing ball.
Isla Waite 00:48:56 Big thumbs up at the end.
Michelle Frechette 00:48:58 Exactly, exactly. So thank you both. I’m looking forward to more opportunities to talk to you both as we move towards this day. It’s getting exciting and things are really ramping up. Very excited to put our, to put our, speaker lineup out there and our session so people can really start to get excited about it. I will say June also says thank you, and so does Adrian. So and thank you both June and Adrian for being in our, in our comments today. We really appreciate it. So all right. That’s it for this week. Next week. Oh I have a banner for this next week. Next week I’ll be talking to Alex Standiford, who has recently launched something called Siren Affiliates. And so, he’s going to come talk to us about affiliate programs and how you can use Siren for that. So look forward to seeing Alex next week. Again. Thank you. We’ll see everybody later.
Isla Waite 00:49:49 Thanks, Michelle. Bye Danielle.
