Creating this website has been a deeply rewarding experience. I’ve been delivering digital solutions for over a decade, primarily working with small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Unfortunately, accessibility isn’t always a priority when budgets are limited.

Although I’m not formally trained in accessibility (a11y) or WCAG compliance, I’ve always made an effort to incorporate basic a11y measures in our projects, such as using alt tags on images and choosing platforms with built-in accessibility features. I figure it’s never enough, but better than nothing.

For this project, I wanted to take those efforts further and explore how to deliver a solution that wasn’t just accessible for visitors but also for contributors. (The jury is still out until we conduct user testing – a topic for another blog post!)

My approach was to focus on balancing foundational accessibility practices, with strong SEO strategies to ensure the site could reach a wider audience, in the most cost-effective way possible. Easy, right?!

Choosing WordPress for Accessibility

I decided to build the site using WordPress. While it’s not my favourite platform to develop personally, WordPress is continuously improving in terms of accessibility and offers practical user experience (UX) functionality. In theory these features make it easier for contributors, regardless of technical expertise or accessibility challenges, to independently create and manage content. Key benefits for using WordPress include:

• Default access control levels: These don’t require modification and effectively remove unnecessary functionality and complexity for content creators.
• Mobile apps: WordPress’s mobile apps simplify content management for contributors, providing accessibility-friendly options on various devices.
• Existing infrastructure: My company already has the tools and processes in place to maintain and support WordPress websites effectively.

Selecting a Theme

For the theme, I opted for the new default Twenty Twenty-Five design, which is specifically optimised for accessibility, as outlined in this helpful guide. I also chose to stick with the default styling, which maximises the theme’s accessibility functionality.

One interesting discovery was that this theme doesn’t include emojis, which we’ve all become very used to using! But, did you know – emojis aren’t accessible for everyone? While there are plugins available to enable emojis, I’ve chosen to leave them out for now. We’ll discuss this with the team to decide whether or not to include them in the future.

Enhancing Accessibility

To further boost accessibility, I installed the WP Accessibility plugin. This plugin addresses common gaps in WordPress themes and core functionality, adding features such as:

• Skip links: These improve navigation for users who rely on keyboard accessibility.
• Keyboard focus enhancements: Interactive elements are easier to see and use with enhanced focus states.
• Form labels: Standard fields like search and comment forms are labelled for better accessibility.
• Alt attribute checks: The plugin highlights images missing alt attributes in the media library, making it easier to ensure compliance.

One aspect that will be explored during testing is whether these plugin features are already covered by the Twenty Twenty-Five theme’s inherent accessibility capabilities. My approach to website development is basically “less is more”, so if we determine any plugin is unnecessary it will be removed to streamline performance, functionality and of course security.

Empowering Contributors

My hope is that this combination of thoughtful design and accessible functionality will empower the team behind The Future Is Accessible to create content independently. Of course, if challenges arise we’ll gladly step in to assist, but enabling contributors to directly participate remains a core goal of this project.

Next Steps: Testing and Feedback

Now that the development phase is complete, I’m keen to work through some hands-on usability testing to see where the site delivers on its goals – and where things have fallen down!

Ultimately I’m hoping to learn more about the experiences of others, and what I can do in digital terms to ensure the projects I’m involved in are accessible and empowering for everyone.

Stay tuned for Part 2!

Photo by Hal Gatewood on Unsplash