Sasha will be giving a talk titled “Practical accessibility for inclusive web“.
What is your favorite improvement to WordPress this past year?
I’m thrilled to see more robust and versatile widgets come to core that offer ways for clients without in-house devs to bring flexibility to their sidebars and widget area.
Why did you decide to speak at WordCamp Montreal?
Well, first of all, I love to share what I know with the WordPress community but I also love to talk about topics that I feel passionate about. Accessibility and inclusion are extremely important topics, especially in the nonprofit tech world where I do most of my work but more and more in the tech word in general. When a colleague of mine told me how scary the Section 508 requirements looked to him I knew I had to show folks that these legal accessibility requirements aren’t actually that scary at all, in practice.
What is your talk going to be about?
I will regale my audience with an overview of accessibility laws to make them feel less scary. Then I’ll cover the most common accessibility standards for designers and developers along with practical examples (I’ll touch on the more complex stuff and include plenty of links for further investigation). And finally, I’ll go over tools you can start using today to test and improve the accessibility of your projects.
What is the one thing you want people to walk away with from your talk?
You can start making your content more accessible to all of your website visitors with small steps that make a big difference.
Who in the WordPress community inspires you? Who do you follow?
I had the pleasure of meeting some brilliant folks at WordCamp Europe this year: Heather Burns is absolutely a “must follow” for digital policy news, Morten Rand-Hendriksen covers a wealth of topics from accessibility to CSS grid. Then there are the usual suspects: Paul Underwood and Tom McFarlin.
What new feature would you like to see in the future?
I’m excited to see how Gutenberg will evolve over the next year or two. Would love to see it turn into a robust tool both for users and devs.