Accessibility Craft

WordPress Accessibility Day 2026 is coming October 7–8, and this episode takes you behind the scenes of how its speakers, sessions, and keynote came together. Ryan Bracey, Director of Web Development and User Experience at Second Melody and Speaker Team Lead for WordPress Accessibility Day, joins Amber and Chris to talk about the hidden work that goes into reviewing 88 speaker submissions, anonymizing proposals to reduce bias, building a diverse schedule, and balancing technical, business, design, and lived-experience perspectives. Ryan also previews some of the sessions he is most excited about, including this year’s keynote from GitHub Head of Accessibility Ed Summers. And everyone previews what excites them personally, with a wide range of upcoming talks covering AI, accessible development workflows, WooCommerce onboarding, remediation pushback, and accessibility ownership after launch. For the craft portion of Accessibility Craft, the group gets into the fall spirit with a Vienna-style lager from Austin’s Fast Friends Beer Company. The beer earns a rare unanimous two-thumbs-up and sparks a surprisingly nostalgic conversation about Oktoberfest, bonfires, beach cookouts, and questionable college beer choices. For show notes and a full transcript, go to AccessibilityCraft.com/182. Chapters (00:00:00) - Introduction(00:01:40) - Meet Ryan Bracey(00:04:50) - Craft Beverage Pick(00:08:26) - Fall Vibes and Tasting Notes(00:13:27) - Ratings and Conference Tease(00:14:11) - WordPress Accessibility Day Overview(00:15:10) - Sponsor Break(00:16:24) - Speaker Selection Process(00:19:15) - Anonymized Reviews and Fairness(00:22:03) - Diversity Stats Snapshot(00:23:07) - Diversity by Merit(00:26:05) - Balancing Talk Ratings(00:27:21) - Perfect Score Spotlight(00:31:21) - Keynote: Ed Summers(00:37:21) - Schedule Picks Roundup(00:43:06) - Team Talks Shoutout(00:45:41) - Where to Find Ryan(00:47:51) - Register and Support(00:48:41) - Podcast Wrap and Credits

This episode is a recording of a September 2026 WordPress Accessibility Meetup, brought to you by Equalize Digital. In this presentation, Cam will provide foundational context about WCAG and explain how to slowly and seriously learn WCAG like a professional. WordPress Accessibility Meetups are a 100% free and virtual community resource that take place via Zoom webinars twice a month. For show notes and a full transcript, go to AccessibilityCraft.com/181.

Special guests Joe Dolson, WordPress core committer and accessibility consultant, and Anne McCarthy, Architecture and Open Source Director at Automattic, join Amber and Steve to talk through the vision behind Accessibility Lab, a new canonical accessibility plugin concept for WordPress core. We learn what Accessibility Lab is, what it is not, and try to understand what the practical use case is in the dizzying context of one of the world's largest open source projects. The conversation gets into some genuinely difficult technical territory, including why some accessibility optimizations in WordPress core are particularly difficult to solve, challenges related to getting enough real-world testing, and the organizational hurdles around collecting bulk data that's detailed enough to shape decisions. There is also healthy disagreement about whether a single canonical plugin can successfully juggle both persistent, stable features and early-stage experiments that in some cases may jeopardize the stability of production WordPress websites. And because this is Accessibility Craft, the group tackles all of that over Cerveza, a Mexican-style lager from Save The World Brewing Company in Marble Falls, Texas. For show notes and a full transcript, go to AccessibilityCraft.com/180. Chapters (00:00:00) - Introduction(00:00:41) - Introducing Special Guests Joe Dolson and Anne McCarthy(00:02:11) - Today's Beverage(00:10:26) - What is the Accessibility Lab plugin?(00:13:09) - Brought to you by Accessibility Checker(00:14:23) - Why create this? How did we get here?(00:18:19) - Anne and Joe Share Their Visions for Accessibility Lab(00:24:29) - Can persistent, helpful features coexist with experimental features that could break some WordPress configurations?(00:35:53) - The Technical and Organizational Challenges Behind Data Collection(00:38:40) - What is the Accessibility Lab not going to do? Where is the line?(00:45:14) - What belongs in Core versus Accessibility Lab?(00:47:56) - Does Accessibility Lab belong on live sites? Opinions are divided.(00:57:10) - How to Help Shape Accessibility Lab

This episode is a recording of an August 2026 WordPress Accessibility Meetup, brought to you by Equalize Digital. In this session, Tanveer Khan explored critical accessibility problems that automated tools often miss, including keyboard navigation issues, focus management problems, screen reader usability challenges, dynamic content announcements, and interaction patterns that require human judgment and manual testing. WordPress Accessibility Meetups are a 100% free and virtual community resource that take place via Zoom webinars twice a month. For show notes and a full transcript, go to AccessibilityCraft.com/179.

In this episode, we take a deep dive into a claim that gets repeated surprisingly often: Accessible websites have better performance. We look at what recent research says about accessibility and website performance, why the connection feels so intuitive, where accessibility improvements really can improve page speed, and why correlation between the two does not necessarily mean causation. We also flip the question around and discuss how poor website performance can itself create accessibility barriers, particularly for people on slower connections or using assistive technology. Before that, we unpack the accessibility changes in WordPress 7.1, including 44 accessibility enhancements and bug fixes, Steve's contributions in this release, high contrast mode fixes, and one controversial accessibility regression: infinite scrolling becoming the default in the Media Library. And because it wouldn't be Accessibility Craft without a drink, Amber and Chris try Dragon's Milk Bourbon Barrel Aged Stout from New Holland Brewing. Steve's bottle didn't survive shipping, so Diet Coke steps in as his designated beverage. Opinions on the stout are... divided. For show notes and a full transcript, go to AccessibilityCraft.com/178. Chapters (00:00:00) - Welcome(00:01:07) - Today’s Beverage(00:05:29) - WordPress 7.1 Accessibility: Several Steps Forward, but Then One Step Back?(00:12:34) - Does Accessibility Make Your Website Faster, Actually?(00:13:42) - Brought to You by Accessibility Checker(00:14:56) - Why Does This Claim Sound So Plausible?(00:20:49) - Amber Goes on a Fact-Finding Mission and Learns What, Exactly?(00:25:43) - Accessibility and Performance: Squares and Rectangles, Chickens and Eggs(00:36:04) - Closing Thoughts: Where We Land