#WPLDN - July 2026: Our 150th Event! Accessibility, Identity & the Agentic Web
Details
Join us for the 150th #WPLDN event. One hundred and fifty evenings of free, community-driven WordPress talks feels worth marking, so we're doing it with three sessions rather than the usual two. We're covering whether WordPress dropdown menus can ever be truly accessible, the business case for understanding why you do what you do, and what happens to your site when the visitor is an AI agent rather than a person.
📅 Date: 30 July 2026
⏰ Time: 6:30 PM BST (doors from 6:00 PM)
🎟️ Cost: Free (Registration
Session 1: WordPress dropdown menus - Can they be truly accessible?
🤝 Speaker: Graham Armfield (Coolfields Consulting)
If your site runs to more than a handful of pages, you're almost certainly using dropdown or flyout submenus. WordPress themes have offered a whole range of approaches over the years, but how many of them actually work for everyone? Graham walks through the patterns commonly found in WordPress themes and assesses the level of accessibility each one delivers. Expect a clear-eyed look at what passes, what doesn't, and what to do about it.
Graham is a Web Accessibility Consultant and the founder of Coolfields Consulting, where he tests websites for accessibility and advises designers and developers on fixing the issues found. He writes and delivers detailed accessibility training for developers, is a WordPress developer who has built accessible sites for clients large and small, and has contributed to the Make WordPress Accessible Team. He's spoken on accessibility at WordCamps and WordPress events for years, and he's been part of the #WPLDN story for a good chunk of those 150 events. Outside of work, you'll likely find him playing guitar, recording his next album, or at a local open mic night.
Session 2: Owning Your Why: The Only Constant in a World of Change
🤝 Speaker: Raquel Manriquez (PressConf)
The only constant in your business isn't the strategy, the stack, or the team. It's the why underneath them. In this candid session, Raquel starts with the question most of us avoid: Who am I actually, and moves to the business case for answering it. The boundaries that hold because you know what you're protecting. The decisions that come quickly because you're not weighing up other people's opinions of you. The steadiness that comes from being someone, rather than just doing things.
Raquel is the founder of WonderlandCurious, a tech event consultancy focused on innovative, people-first experiences. A longtime leader in the WordPress ecosystem, she founded the WooCommerce agency Mode Effect and led it for a decade before a successful exit in 2020. Today she channels that community experience into PressConf, a conference built around candid, unrecorded conversations among the leaders shaping the WordPress economy. A perpetually curious soul, Raquel believes deeply in the power of meaningful connection wherever her feet land. Outside of work, she's a recent graduate of full-time parenthood and enjoys music, the outdoors, wanderlust, and time with her big, Indigenous family.
Session 3: Preparing WordPress sites for the agentic web
🤝 Speaker: Daphne Monro ([Hosting.com](https://hosting.com))
AI agents don't just rank pages. They call APIs, parse structured data, evaluate trust signals, and increasingly complete actions on behalf of users. Daphne explores what that shift means for WordPress: exposing clean, structured data through schema and feeds, building product and shopping setups that are machine-readable, keeping APIs and endpoints stable and well documented, and preparing content for retrieval, summarisation, and transaction. The focus is on building sites that agents can confidently interpret, cite, and act through, not just crawl, and positioning brands for a web where software is often the primary interface.
Daphne is Head of Website and Content at Hosting.com, where she leads website performance, SEO, CRO, migrations, and global content strategy across multiple brands. She specialises in large-scale domain migrations, technical SEO, and building high-performing content ecosystems that align brand, product, and revenue. A frequent industry speaker, she has presented at events including BrightonSEO and featured on SEO podcasts, including SEO in 2026 and Masters of Search. She's known for combining deep technical expertise with strategic brand leadership across Web2 and Web3.
Schedule:
🔹 6:00 PM – Doors Open & Networking
🔹 6:30 PM – Welcome & Session 1: Graham Armfield
🔹 7:15 PM – Session 2: Raquel Manriquez
🔹 7:45 PM – Short Break & Networking
🔹 7:55 PM – Session 3: Daphne Monro
🔹 8:30 PM – Q&A, Social & Wrap-Up
📢 RSVP Now!
Three sessions, one milestone, and the usual good company. Whether you come for the accessibility deep dive, the honest conversation about why you do what you do, or the look at where the agentic web takes us next, there's plenty to take away. Bring your questions for the Q&A and stick around afterwards to raise a glass to 150 events. Secure your free spot today, and we'll see you on the 30th! 🎉
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Venue Information
The Bridge is a charity supporting women to make positive choices and encouraging improvements to fitness, health, and wellbeing. The venue features a plant-based café (supplied by Girls Who Grind Coffee) and is just a 5-minute walk from London Bridge Station.
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Massive thanks to our sponsors who make these free events possible:
Filter, Kinsta, Mollie, and PodcasterPlus.
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If you're interested in being a featured speaker at an upcoming event, we'd love to hear from you at https://wpldn.uk/speak.
🎥 - Media Release Terms
By attending, you understand and accept that portions of the event may have audio/photo/video-recorded and/or live-streamed and may be used by the organisers. You agree that the organisers have the right and permission to use and publish such media for any purpose in any format, including online and offline, now and ever after, without further compensation, permission, or notification. You understand that all official recordings from the event are the exclusive property of the organisers, available under the Creative Commons AttributionShareAlike license for general use, and you do not ask for nor expect compensation or notification of the use of official recordings or photographs in which you appear or speak. Please inform an organisational team member at the event's start if you do not wish to appear in photos or videos.
