#151 – Elena Brescacin on Accessibility Challenges and Solutions

Transcript

[00:00:00] Nathan Wrigley: Welcome to the Jukebox podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley.

Jukebox is a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress. The people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case the challenges of creating accessible websites with WordPress.

If you’d like to subscribe to the podcast, you can do that by searching for WP Tavern in your podcast player of choice, or by going to wptavern.com/feed/podcast. And you can copy that URL into most podcast players.

If you have a topic that you’d like us to feature on the podcast, I’m keen to hear from you and hopefully get you, or your idea, featured on the show. Head to wptavern.com/contact/jukebox, and use the form there.

So on the podcast today we have Elena Brescacin. Elena is an accessibility consultant from Italy who has been blind since birth, and working online since 2000 with Tangity Design a part of NTT Data Company.

Her journey with WordPress began in 2021, but she has been aware of it since 2003. A computer geek, Elena enjoys finding solutions to everyday challenges through technology.

Elena is here to discuss the significant accessibility advancements and challenges within WordPress, especially with the transition from the Classic Editor to the Block Editor. She shares how full site editing has empowered her to manage most of her site content and structure without needing constant visual assistance, despite some areas needing further improvement.

We talk about her experiences navigating the internet using screen reader software, the importance of adhering to HTML semantics for accessibility, and her involvement in the WordPress community, including her contributions to the Italian Polyglots, and speaking at WordPress events.

Elena also reflects on the evolution of the internet, personal experiences with various web accessibility tools, and her advocacy work in digital spaces. We get into real world challenges, such as inaccessible event venues, and the advantages of online events for better accessibility.

Elena shares her frustrations and triumphs in web accessibility, her insights on the impact of proper semantic web design, and her continued efforts to raise awareness and support a more inclusive internet.

If you’re curious about web accessibility, particularly how WordPress is used to create content, this episode is for you.

If you’re interested in finding out more, you can find all of the links in the show notes by heading to wptavern.com/podcast, where you’ll find all the other episodes as well.

And so without further delay, I bring you Elena Brescacin.

I am joined on the podcast today by Elena Brescacin. Hello, Elena.

[00:03:28] Elena Brescacin: Hello. Thank you for having me as a guest.

[00:03:32] Nathan Wrigley: You are so welcome. I have to say, massive apologies to Elena, and we’ll get onto this in a moment. Elena has been more gracious than you can imagine.

We have tried multiple times to get this podcast recorded. And apart from this one time, more or less everything that we’ve tried has failed. And as I said, we’ll discover why that is in a moment. But firstly, my sincere thanks for sticking with me, despite the frustrating nature of it, seemingly being happy to carry on the endeavor. So I’m very grateful. Thank you so much.

Okay, so the endeavor today is to talk about your journey with WordPress, we’re going to land there in the end. But before we get into that, would you just give us a little bit of your potted bio, and hopefully that’ll paint a picture of what we’re going to talk about today. But just tell us a little bit about yourself, what you have done in the past. Maybe go back right to the beginning of all that. And then, yeah, just let us know what it is that you’re doing currently.

[00:04:29] Elena Brescacin: I am an accessibility consultant. I am blind, I have been blind since birth. I’m from Italy. I work online since 2000. 2002 I started working officially, and I work for the same company. It has changed names many times, but now it’s called Tangity Design. It’s part of NTT Data Company. It’s a Japanese multi-country company.

Currently I am working so much time with AI and with accessibility of websites and mobile apps. And of course, I’m involved into the Fediverse because I find that it’s the future of communication right now. I have no WordPress in 2003, but I started using it in 2021.

[00:05:26] Nathan Wrigley: Thank you very much. So earlier in your bio just then, you said that you had been blind from birth. Now I’m not entirely sure what the spectrum of that word means, but my understanding is that the word blind can be different things to different people. But in your case, is it fair to say that you are entirely blind, you have no sight at all, or do you have impaired vision?

[00:05:49] Elena Brescacin: No, no, no, I am totally blind. I don’t see anything.

[00:05:53] Nathan Wrigley: And clearly on a podcast like this, where we’re talking about WordPress, this is going to play into the conversation a lot. Is it the sort of blind nature of things that you are doing your accessibility work in? Are you helping people online, particularly WordPress website builders and app builders and things like that? Do they come to you with a requirement to understand how their interface, how their website is working, and you give them kind of an appraisal of, this works, this doesn’t work, you need to look at this and so on?

[00:06:22] Elena Brescacin: Yes, it happens. This is part of my job. I also teach to some customers when they have no idea of what accessibility is.

I have had many speeches for accessibility. I participated to TEDx in 2015. I did not use WordPress then. And I had the WordPress Accessibility Day in 2024. I have spoken in two WordCamps. Italy, WordCamp 2021, and Verona WordCamp 2023. Unfortunately, the speeches are in Italian. Accessibility is in English, WordPress Accessibility Day is in English. The speech is called the Same Editor, Same Language. It talks about Gutenberg. And I also participated to Core Days, WordPress Core Days in 2024, last November in Rome. And I presented my experience with multilingual website based on Gutenberg.

[00:07:29] Nathan Wrigley: Thank you very much. Now, it feels to me that if you’ve been working online, and I think you mentioned 2003 possibly as one of the earlier dates that you mentioned in your biography. Would it be true to say that at the beginning of the internet, so when we were all just getting online, and it was dial up modems and what have you. I was using the internet from a fairly early date, and it feels to me as if the internet might have been a more hospitable place for somebody who is blind back then.

Because my recollection of the internet back then was that really it was just text. There was text and there were underlying text links. There was very little in the way of imagery, but it was primarily text. We certainly didn’t have video, we didn’t have complicated platforms to publish things online.

Has the internet basically become more challenging over the previous two decades for somebody like you to navigate around? I’m not talking there about the ability to create content, I’m just talking about the ability to consume content. Is the internet more noisy, more difficult to navigate around now than it used to be, let’s say 20 years ago?

[00:08:42] Elena Brescacin: Oh, well, it depends on what you want to see, because you had much text-based content then, it’s true. But obstacles began into 1999 with the first visual captcha, the anti-spam, anti-bot control based on visual text. Copy this text into a box. If you are a human you can see, otherwise you are cut off.

[00:09:15] Nathan Wrigley: I know exactly what you mean. So it was those early captchas where you had to be able to see a particular thing. And if you could see it, it was fairly straightforward to carry on. And we all know what captchas are. We see them still, often it’s click on pictures of, I don’t know, cars or something like that. And without that pass, if you like, you are stifled, aren’t you? You can’t then go on to do whatever it is. It may be log into a platform, what have you. So that was your first experience, was it? Captchas was the first time the internet became something which you could no longer do. Suddenly there was a barrier which hadn’t existed before.

[00:09:49] Elena Brescacin: It has started to become common after 1999. The first to implement was Yahoo, Yahoo Groups. Then it came on Google, it came everywhere.

Now I have also another platform that concerns money. Some benefits of a service I have joined, they give a benefit, yearly benefit. And they have a captcha, a visual captcha on login, a visual captcha to change the password, a visual captcha for if you forget the password. I must ask for help every time I have to access that service.

[00:10:29] Nathan Wrigley: So the internet in that regard is an entirely frustrating experience. I’m sure that we’ll get into slightly more positive things.

But I want to spend a moment just discussing what it is that you do when you browse the internet. I mean, clearly it’s obvious to you what you do, but it may be that the listeners to this podcast, because we have a very wide listenership, and some of them are very experienced, they no doubt think about accessibility for their websites all the time. But there’s bound to be other people who really don’t know what it is that somebody like you is doing on a day-to-day basis to navigate the internet.

So can we just describe what it is that you are doing. When you are sat at your computer now, and we could talk about different devices like phones or whatever as well, but let’s just begin with a computer, a desktop computer. How is it that you are able to navigate the internet without being able to see what’s on a screen, how does it work?

[00:11:25] Elena Brescacin: So I do not have a mouse, I do not use a mouse. I have a keyboard, standard keyboard every person has at home. I used the computer since 1989. I was less than 10 years old, and I was nine, almost 10 years old. And I learned to use the keyboard to get confident with the keyboard. But computers now have some software. Some are expensive, some are free. They are called the screen readers. I currently use the paid one. It’s called Jaws for Windows, acronym for Job Access With Speech.

[00:12:06] Nathan Wrigley: We will add that into the show notes so that everybody can find that, thank you. Yeah, sorry, keep going, I interrupted.

[00:12:11] Elena Brescacin: It’s a software that renders by voice, or by braille device. There is a hardware device called Braille Display, which is for braillists like me, otherwise they use speech. I use, of course, I use a Windows machine.

Another open source software is called NVDA. It’s for Windows, Non-visual Desktop Access. I use those softwares on the computer, on Windows.

On Macintosh, I have also a Macintosh, but I use it rarely because it’s old, it’s about 10 years old. The screen reader there is called Voiceover, the same that is in my main mobile device, my iPhone.

And unfortunately the open source field, I’ve talked about Linux, it’s less careful to accessibility. There are some users, brave users that use that kind of system, but I find it less immediate, less straight forward. Let’s say I have to work, I have to have smooth work, not to go and check if everything works before working. Do you understand me?

[00:13:27] Nathan Wrigley: I fully understand. I think most people who have had experience with Windows, Mac, and Linux, I think there’s a certain level of dedication, shall we say, which is required to keep going with Linux. Some people have it, and other people don’t. But it sounds like it’s the same for you as it would be for somebody who has sight, only a different set of problems no doubt.

Now, when I go to a website, let’s say for example I visit, I don’t know, in my case the BBC website, which is a news organisation in the UK. And they present lots of written content, and lots of video content, and lots of images and so on. When I’m looking at that, I navigate my way around by capturing what comes into my eyes, and I decide what I want to look at based upon the prompts, text or what have you. And then I find the link and what have you.

It would occur to me that many people would imagine that you, as a screen reader user, are browsing the same way that I am. In other words, you are looking somehow at the same screen that I am.

But that’s not true, is it? Because you are kind of in a way navigating the HTML. And the way that the website has been constructed on the backend is much more important than it would be for me.

So for example, a font size of something enormous screams title just because it’s big. But in your case, the bigness of the text doesn’t say anything about its titleness if you like. And this same thing maps out in every single part of the website.

So can you just give us an idea of what it is that you have to go through, let’s say when you end up at a website like the BBC. What are you actually doing with the keyboard, and how are you getting information about what it is that you want to get to? Or how are you not getting information about what it is that you want to get to? So the frustrations as well as how it ought to be done.

[00:15:21] Elena Brescacin: Oh, well, you said about the big text saying title. I look for, if I have to read a piece of news, not the list of news, but the single article of news to search for the news. I look for the heading level one. It’s an HTML code called heading.

There are six levels of headings. Heading level one is the most important, the most evident, it’s the title. If I have to search for a new site, a brand new site, I usually search for the main menu, a navigation menu. HTML has a semantic, it’s called semantic. The layout is associated to specific code.

You know that if it has four legs, a tail, it can be an animal. The website, the concept is very, very restricted because navigation menu is a type of code. And often developers and designers create visually with graphics what should be created by code. So screen readers do not detect information correctly.

So with the example of before, the animal, it has four legs, a tail, but it’s a cylindrical chair. Sighted people always protest when I say your product is not tested for accessibility, and a website rather than mobile app, or a physical product and so on.

Then if I create some content, an article, a text, a word document, whatever else, they always protest. Sighted people protest because I have not checked the formatting, the text is too small, or too big, or I have no color, and I say, why should you protest? If I have no sighted person testing my product before I deploy it publicly, why should you protest if a sighted people have not tested my product, and why should I not protest being blind if your product is not tested by blind? It’s the same, the same frustration, but they don’t understand.

[00:17:59] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, so with your screen reader you are going through and you are hoping to find cues inside the code of the website, for want of a better word. Let’s just say it like that. You’re hoping to find the H1s, which will indicate, this is a title, you’re hoping to find the H2s, which indicate this is a subheading if you like. And then, you know, H3 is under that, and H4 is under that, and all of that working out in a logical structure. So this semantic nature of everything.

[00:18:24] Elena Brescacin: Sequential.

[00:18:25] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, sequential. And my guess is that when you are browsing the web, this is very rarely the case. I’m going to ask you a question, it’s putting you on the spot a little bit. But if you had to put a percentage, so one through to a hundred, a percentage on how frequently you encounter a website which you can completely use without a great deal of effort. So it’s built exactly how you would expect it to be, how you would wish it to be. As a percentage, how often does that happen? If you were to visit a hundred websites, how many of them would satisfy you from an accessibility point of view?

[00:19:02] Elena Brescacin: Oh my god. Could I say 20, 30%? But the percentage would increase if, for example, some news websites, many of them are even based on WordPress, but the problem itself is not WordPress or the CMS, it’s the many, many, many advertising that they put inside. Moving advertising, moving sliders. Images without labels, or buttons without labels.

I had a very, very high frustration last week because Nathan was trying to interview me with a platform called SquadCast, but it did not give me the control for the microphone, the speakers, the headphones. It was labeled related to chat, help leave the call and so on, but not the setting of microphone. So no one could hear each other.

[00:20:03] Nathan Wrigley: It was a profoundly moving experience actually. And I say that in all of the wrong senses of the word, moving for all the wrong reasons. Because I have interviewed hundreds, possibly thousands of people at this point, but I don’t believe that I’ve ever interviewed anybody who has no sight. And so you are a first. And so honestly the guilt I’m feeling is fairly profound.

I sent you the link in order to open up the platform in the same way that I do every single time, and then there was just this wave of one frustration after another. And it never stopped, did it? It was just one problem, then another, then another.

There’s things that we were trying to set up like selecting the headphones to use, which is typically a one second exercise, and selecting the microphone that you wish to use. Again, it’s another fairly straightforward exercise if you use it in the way that I do. But we must have spent, what, half an hour, something like that, just hitting obstacle after obstacle. And it really did give me a profound sense of, well, this is just wrong.

Here we are trying to carry out a normal thing, I’m eating up your time, and you are eating into my time, and so there’s this sense of guilt in both directions that, well, we’re wasting each other’s time and what have you.

All the while the frustration is building for you because literally nothing that you were hoping to achieve was possible. And so that was the sort of apology at the beginning. We are recording it on another platform today, which thankfully has proven to be an awful lot easier. I’m sure in many respects it’s not perfect as well, but we seem to be having a little bit more luck but, again, describe that, this isn’t perfect either.

[00:21:41] Elena Brescacin: Yeah, not to speak about the calendar. When I talk about semantic, another good example should be table. The calendar Nathan has to book the podcasts has no table structure and no keyboard commands to select the dates. Overall you have no semantic, it’s just a visual. The time zone, which date can be selected. So for example, I was trying the 16th of December for the new reschedule of the interview, and it just gave me, sent me a calendar, the calendar invitation on 11th of December.

[00:22:27] Nathan Wrigley: The thing that I’m getting out of it is that the internet for me basically is a, how to describe this? The internet for me has usually been a place of joy. I go to it and everything, given the nature of what I have available to me, you know, my eyes function, my ears function, my arms and legs are all functioning, and I have a screen which is just at the right height for me and everything. Essentially everything in my scenario is working in the way that I would hope. And so the internet is this thing of joy. I go there and I can consume film, I can consume audio, I can write blog posts, I can take part in podcast interviews. It’s wonderful.

But I’m getting the impression that for somebody such as you, the internet is possibly anything other than joyful. I mean, maybe it is in some regards joyful, and that there’s no doubt moments where you’re profoundly moved by it, and it is wonderful. But I’m guessing also that it is also seriously annoying. It’s almost like you have to go the extra mile again, and again, and again, and again to do basic things.

And as we move more of ordinary life online, banking goes online. Booking things that you want to be delivered to your house goes online. The government, paying tax goes online. If it’s not set up for you, you are really being penalised for the way that the world is moving. And that must be frustrating and let all of that out if you want to, you know, is it a frustrating experience, the internet for you?

[00:23:55] Elena Brescacin: I think that internet was given the wrong dimension, make it more utopia than it really is. Because let’s remember that internet is made by humans. So if humans do not pay attention to other humans, the issue is the same you can find in the street outside. It’s not something worse than real world.

It can be amplified if you have, for example, social networks hate speech. I sometimes ask people to describe photos for me because they don’t. They publish a screenshot on their posts on social networks, a screenshot regarding conversation, regarding even politics and so on. But then I do not read the line because it’s a screenshot.

And if I asked, can you describe the photo for me? They just say something to me. What, are you stupid? Did you not understand? People like you should not come to the social network. If you are blind, how can you read, and can you write? They doubt my identity. And so not to talk about voting, voting elections. I have a person helping me. They come to the cabin with me, the room where we have to vote. They take a pencil and trace the sign to the right politician or whatever I say, but I have no proof. I have no proof if they have actually voted what I asked for.

[00:25:39] Nathan Wrigley: Gosh.

[00:25:40] Elena Brescacin: Yes, this is the reality.

[00:25:42] Nathan Wrigley: You sound much more buoyant about it. I was maybe anticipating the wrong thing in a sense there, but it sounds like you, rather than being, I don’t know, miserable about the failings of the internet for people who are blind, but it feels like you’ve gone in the other direction. That you’ve gone more in the, I want to make people aware that this is going on. So you are advising people when they don’t put alt tags on their social media posts. You’ve done that to me, which was really helpful, because I then know that that’s a requirement. And also, you’ve got yourself in the WordPress space and are educating people.

So I’m just keen to know what your posture is there. Is it going to be your mission in the future basically to be helpful and to fight the good fight about accessibility?

[00:26:28] Elena Brescacin: I try to help people and to help myself because just the frustration brings nowhere. If you just go on with frustration, it’s over. Online services give me a lot, for example, digital books, e-commerce and so on, online banking and so on. But if you do nothing for accessibility, you cannot expect others to do anything.

[00:26:57] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, good point.

[00:26:58] Elena Brescacin: Overall, you cannot expect politician to do anything.

[00:27:03] Nathan Wrigley: In terms of WordPress, let’s just shift the conversation to WordPress now. We have the new, well, it’s not new anymore, we have the Block Editor, the Site Editor and what have you. And I’m going to link to a few bits and pieces in the show notes. So if you go to wptavern.com and you search for this episode, and it will be on the page there, we’ll add the links to all of the bits and pieces we’re about to discuss. You’ve written a few articles where you say that WordPress has basically made leaps and bounds, and it’s become an interface which is much better for you to use.

Now, let’s just rewind the clock like 10 years or more, when we had what is now the classic editor. What was it like as a content writer, a story writer, a blogger who was blind? What was it like back then, and how has it improved with the block editor?

[00:27:55] Elena Brescacin: So I have worked into the WordPress system. I knew it in 2003. My profile on wordpress.org is from 2005. And my activity in WordPress was very frustrating at the beginning, because I didn’t find very easily the controls on the classic editor. Strange, because many blind users I know are happy with the classic editor. For me, it’s different. Maybe it’s me, I don’t know. But when classic editor was the only one to use, I was using it in code mode. So I wrote HTML by hand. And in the end I abandoned the WordPress because it wasn’t so good.

But at that time, I was talking to the first Italian community manager, let’s say. He was called Paolo Valenti. And this guy was the first translator of WordPress. And he just said, remember you cannot leave WordPress totally, sooner or later you’ll come back. And he was right. This man, unfortunately, is no longer here. He died by cancer in 2022.

[00:29:19] Nathan Wrigley: So in the day when you were using the Classic Editor, and for many people listening to this podcast, that will be entirely familiar. But for those people who’ve joined in the last five, six years or so, it may be something that you haven’t dabbled with.

Yeah, you really did have to, in order to make the full use of it and to add things onto the page, it was possible to write some text and then highlight it, and then potentially, I don’t know, select that you wanted it to be a paragraph or what have you. In many ways it was more straightforward to write the HTML itself, wasn’t it? So you would write the P tag and what have you.

And this became an incredibly frustrating experience, which probably that kind of experience was the thing which promoted the idea of using a block-based approach where you drop the block in and you begin writing, and you can do the forward slash and select the kind of block that you want, and you’re off to the races.

So how is the block editor better than the classic editor? And obviously we know that some of your friends would disagree with that sentiment, but for you, why do you find it better? What does it do differently and better in your experience?

[00:30:23] Elena Brescacin: Because the block is an interface, basically it’s an interface, and it’s from the rules from WordPress Core, they say it’s accessible, second level accessibility guidelines. I do not enter into technical details now. But my opinion on Block Editor is because you can rapidly move blocks up and down with a key combination. You can even check the style, the colours and so on. That’s not my task.

But having to select a single block and work on that block without harming the other content. The possibility to add a block manually with the add block function or by markdown. I use markdown syntax for titles, for headings. Not links, but many other functions because I do not take my hands away from the keyboard, the letters.

[00:31:26] Nathan Wrigley: It hadn’t really occurred to me that the Block Editor kind of locks you into the block that you are currently working on in a way, doesn’t it? So you just said that you can’t kind of interfere with the other bits and pieces on a page unless you are editing within the confines of that block.

So if I’m in a paragraph block and I am writing, I’m in that paragraph. Whereas with the old Classic Editor, I was in all of the content, unless there was some plugin or something like that, that was going to inject something.

So an accidental keystroke could delete tons of content, including the markup that would’ve given that portion of the content some context. So, you know, it might have been the H1 tag. You could accidentally interfere with that, delete that somehow. Whereas all of that is then abstracted away inside the Block Editor, and it’s a selection you make, not a heading that you type. Although I suppose you could choose to do it that way. So that’s interesting. I hadn’t really thought about it like that. So it creates less mistakes, it’s easier to get started. And if you were to drop into somebody else’s piece of content, you’d be able to navigate your way around it more easily, right?

[00:32:31] Elena Brescacin: And even the templating system, the Full Site Editing has changed my point of view on templating, because before I had to hire someone for coding and so on.

Now, I have also hired a person for helping me with the styling, with graphics and so on. But this woman who has helped me, who spoke to the WordPress Accessibility Day with me, she has helped me with the styles, but was just teaching me the interface for what’s about the content and the structure of the site. It’s mine. Gloria just did the colours, and the size, and what visual, and what I cannot verify in person.

[00:33:20] Nathan Wrigley: Okay, so you were able to do the lion’s share as we describe it, the lion’s share of the work. And really the bit that, I think you said Gloria was doing there, Gloria was helping you just to have that appeal for somebody with sight. So she was sizing the text so that it looked appropriate on the page, but the majority of it you were able to do inside the Site Editor. Interacting with, what is what you get templates, as opposed to having to employ somebody to fiddle with template.php files and things like that.

[00:33:46] Elena Brescacin: Yes, she just helped me because she is a freelance web designer and WordPress trainer, and she has trained me on Full Site Editing. The good thing is that she has believed in me from the beginning.

When I supported another person in a Facebook group, she contacted me, and then we started the journey to WordCamps. I have spoken to a couple of WordCamps in Verona, and one is online. Those ones are in Italian. And I have also participated with Gloria in the WordPress Accessibility Day 2024.

[00:34:29] Nathan Wrigley: What does WordPress still have to get right? So although it sounds like you personally are very happy with the Block Editor and it’s brought a lot of benefits that you can make use of. I’m guessing that there’s an awful lot frustration still. What would be the things for the year 2025 that you would hope would be addressed? What are still some of the things which are frustrating about being, well, not just the Block Editor, being inside a WordPress site in general? But maybe the Block Editor is a good target to begin.

[00:35:00] Elena Brescacin: Oh, for example, a more targeted search block. Because now the search block, you have just the search field and button, it could be like that. But when you place that block in a navigation or somewhere, you should be able to choose where it can search. Because if you are, for example, I have my site talking about a real world and a fantasy world, I should be able to say, search for content just in the real world and just in the fantasy world.

So when they click in the menu, in the search box on the main fantasy world page, they just got content from that category or from that post type. In fact, I have created a multilingual, experimental, and very basic site by using just Gutenberg and template.

They should also give the possibility to duplicate a template. Because now, Gutenberg, you can duplicate post, duplicate page. But if you have, for example, I have Italian header and English header, I would like to be able to clone the Italian header and then translate the content inside.

[00:36:26] Nathan Wrigley: There’s always going to be things, isn’t there? Edge cases. It really hadn’t occurred to me that search being a front end thing was something that needed addressing. But it sounds like it does. But what about the sort of backend of things, if you like?

[00:36:36] Elena Brescacin: The search block I mean is a backend thing that you can set up from the template. You can set up the block, the interface of the block in the block settings. That I mean.

[00:36:49] Nathan Wrigley: How do you feel about the importance that’s given to the direction the project in terms of accessibility? Do you feel it gets the attention it deserves?

In an ideal world it would obviously, every single thing about the WordPress project, the community, the code, everything would have accessibility front and centre. But we don’t live in that perfect world. We live in the world where we have the constraints on time, and the project has to move in certain directions, and maybe accessibility falls off for one of the releases and what have you.

But how do you feel, as a whole, WordPress does? Do you feel it is at the forefront? Do you think it’s lagging behind other platforms that you may have played with?

[00:37:28] Elena Brescacin: WordPress for now is the best CMS for accessibility in backend with its Full Site Editing. But I think it has to become more consistent. Accessibility team should get more people inside I think for testing, for coders, skilled coders. Because I feel that it’s, not being neglected willingly, but because few people are working in that. This is my feeling.

[00:38:02] Nathan Wrigley: Do you involve yourself in those communities? And if you do, are you able to tell us where you might go if having listened to this podcast, you think, actually, do you know what, that would be something I’d like to spend some of my time on.

So just drop some of the names of the, I don’t know, Slack channels or other places online that you go when you want to discuss WordPress accessibility.

[00:38:25] Elena Brescacin: I mostly go to the GitHub platform of specific project. Let’s talk about ActivityPub, let’s talk about single plugins accessibility.

There is the Slack channel in Make WordPress Slack. But I do not participate often into Slack because unfortunately at work I have not that time. So it happens that I miss discussions. Sometimes I have helped the Polyglots in the Italian community, Polyglot, to translate WordPress.

[00:39:04] Nathan Wrigley: It also sounds like you’ve been involved in real world events, plus some online events as well. I think you mentioned WordCamps that you’d attended as well, and I was wondering from an accessibility point how they have been.

But also you mentioned the WP Accessibility Day as well. Do you just want to mention your participation in those? Let’s start with WordPress events. How have they been from your perspective?

[00:39:27] Elena Brescacin: Accessibility, unfortunately it’s very difficult. Real world events are very difficult for accessibility because I need a person helping me to move through location, the WordCamp locations. It’s quite difficult without help.

There are many information that are conveyed by colours. The black signal is the track one, the white is track two, for example, and so on, or you have the locations. There are no, not many explanation. I must ask for help to move across tables on the contributor days. Now I am trying to apply to WordCamp Europe 2025. I don’t know how it goes.

I went to the WordCamp 2023 and to WordPress Core Day 2024. I got help from people there, but I had a person assisting me because otherwise I could not manage to go to the WordCamp alone. But the WordPress Accessibility Day was online.

[00:40:38] Nathan Wrigley: So that was a more straightforward undertaking.

[00:40:40] Elena Brescacin: Yes. But let me say that in-person events are more useful for networking. You get to know people, you get to talk to people, you get to confront. In few words, you get to exist, because otherwise you are a voice, you’re a face, you’re nothing else.

[00:40:59] Nathan Wrigley: Who are some of the people online in the WordPress space that you hang out with, who you communicate with? Do you want to just name drop a few people that it might be interesting for me to add into the show notes, so that people can follow them as well as you on maybe social media or something.

[00:41:14] Elena Brescacin: I think you know Michelle Frechette. Matthias Pfefferle from ActivityPub. Yes, you know him because you just interviewed him. I knew about your event because I was following him and I got you to the Mastodon network.

[00:41:31] Nathan Wrigley: Excellent. I’ll put some of those links into the show notes so people can follow them as well. But more importantly, Elena, where would people, if people have been listening to this and thought that they’d like to communicate with you and get your thoughts on the state of WordPress in terms of accessibility, where would we find you? Where’s the place where you hang out most frequently? I think you said Mastodon.

[00:41:50] Elena Brescacin: On Mastodon and on LinkedIn.

[00:41:53] Nathan Wrigley: Perfect. I will find the links for both of those and I will add them to the show notes. Anything else that we have mentioned today will also be in the show notes. Head to wptavern.com. Search for the podcast section, and within that search for Elena’s podcast. And from there you’ll be able to delve inside the show notes, and get a faithful transcription of everything that we said today as well, I hope.

So all that it remains for me to do is to say, Elena Brescacin, thank you so much for chatting to me today. I really appreciate it.

[00:42:23] Elena Brescacin: Okay.

On the podcast today we have Elena Brescacin.

Elena is an accessibility consultant from Italy who has been blind since birth, and working online since 2000 with Tangity Design, a part of NTT Data Company. Her journey with WordPress began in 2021, but she has been aware of it since 2003. A computer geek, Elena enjoys finding solutions to everyday challenges through technology.

Elena is here to discuss the significant accessibility advancements and challenges within WordPress, especially with the transition from the Classic Editor to the Block Editor. She shares how Full Site Editing has empowered her to manage most of her site content and structure without needing constant visual assistance, despite some areas needing further improvement.

We talk about her experiences navigating the internet using screen reader software, the importance of adhering to HTML semantics for accessibility, and her involvement in the WordPress community, including her contributions to the Italian Polyglots and speaking at WordPress events.

Elena also reflects on the evolution of the internet, personal experiences with various web accessibility tools, and her advocacy work in digital spaces. We get into real-world challenges, such as inaccessible event venues, and the advantages of online events for better accessibility.

Elena shares her frustrations and triumphs in web accessibility, her insights on the impact of proper semantic website design, and her continued efforts to raise awareness and support a more inclusive internet.

If you’re curious about web accessibility, particularly how WordPress is used to create content, this episode is for you.

Useful links

Elena’s Mastodon

Elena on LinkedIn

Tangity Design

Share to fight prejudice, Elena on TEDxAssisi

Same Editor, Same Language: How Gutenberg’s Accessibility Enhances Creativity and Inclusion at WordPress Accessibility Day 2024

BlIND – Blogging e indipendenza: WordPress senza vedere at WordCamp Verona 2023

WordPress a dieci dita: creare un sito con la sola tastiera at WordCamp Italia 2021

Interview with Elena Brescacin at WordPress Core Days, Roma 2024

JAWS (screen reader)

Braille Display

NonVisual Desktop Access

Voiceover for Mac

Elena’s Plus Brothers

Defeating silence and stigma with WordPress / Sconfiggere silenzio e stigma con WordPress

How Elena Brescacin Uses ally to Break HIV Stigma and Champion Accessibility