WordPress Accessibility Meetup

Most teams approach accessibility through training, audits, or late-stage QA. While these efforts are important, they don’t scale - especially as frontend codebases grow more complex and teams rely on shared components and design systems.

In this talk, Niharika will reframe accessibility as a frontend architecture concern and a leadership responsibility, not just an individual skill or compliance task. We’ll look at how accessibility outcomes are shaped by architectural decisions - component APIs, state and focus management, and system-level defaults and why fixing issues after implementation leads to recurring accessibility debt.

Niharika will walk you through how to shift accessibility left across the frontend lifecycle: from design constraints and reusable patterns, to accessible component primitives, to automated feedback that catches regressions early. Finally, we’ll explore the role of frontend leads in making accessibility stick - by setting standards, enabling teams, and measuring success beyond checklists.

You will leave with concrete, actionable practices you can apply immediately, whether you are working on a single product or a shared frontend platform.
After this session, you will be able to:

• Explain why common accessibility approaches don’t scale in modern frontend teams
• Identify architectural decisions that have the biggest accessibility impact
• Apply “shift left” principles to accessibility in design, development, and CI
• Use component systems to prevent common accessibility regressions
• Influence accessibility adoption across teams without slowing delivery

Thank you to our sponsors:

The European Accessibility Act requires a number of things beyond technical accessibility to WCAG/EN 301 549 guidelines. You’ll leave with a clear understanding of what compliance requires and how to start preparing. This session will break down who needs to comply, which standards apply today, and what’s coming next, plus what early enforcement looks like.

Thank you to our sponsors:

This session, presented by Donata Stroink-Skillrud, President of Termageddon, will discuss drafting an internal Accessibility Support Policy, including what the Policy should state and how to communicate it to your staff. Best practices on how to train your staff to provide accessible support will be shared.

Learning Outcomes:

• Know what an Accessibility Support Policy is.
• Understand what an Accessibility Support Policy should include and how to draft one.
• Learn how to communicate your Accessibility Support Policy to your support staff.
• Get ideas for how to create your own Accessibility Support Training and what it should include (e.g. why does accessibility matter in support, legal requirements, types of disabilities, categories of disabilities, assistive technologies, accessible communication practices, accommodation requests, how to handle issues, respectful language and tone, examples and scenarios).

Thank you to our sponsors: