Q&A with Natalie

Q&A Session

Matt: Hey Natalie, that was an awesome presentation. Just have a couple questions that I wrote down while you were showing off your slides. Um, the first one that really resonated with me was your example of holding a crying baby and trying to operate a phone at the same time.

Because that has happened to me when I, when I had my first son and I was like, my God, this website is terrible. How can anyone use this with one hand? So this stuff comes, it’s, it’s, it’s for the betterment of the web. It’s for betterment of using a website, all of this, this stuff. Um, What efforts, I know you’ve been speaking about this topic for, you know, many years.

What other efforts have you done or where can folks go to get educated to learn more about this? That it’s not just like for screen readers or for hearing impaired folks. This is for everyone. Do you have a couple of resources where you normally point people to like agencies and freelancers to get educated about this stuff?

Natalie: Yeah, actually Google has [00:01:00] published a free course that is a very nice. I think it’s on Udemy. Um, it’s like an eight hour course on accessibility and it’s wonderful and free. So for developers and designers, that is an excellent course to go and take.

Matt: What are your thoughts on, I’m sure you have many, we’ll try to keep it brief.

What are your thoughts on accessibility, WordPress accessibility in general, especially with the block editor? Let’s not talk about the site editor. Let’s just talk about the block editor and writing content and, you know, forming a page and stuff like that. How, what, what’s your, your gut feeling on, on where WordPress stands for good accessibility?

Natalie: Um, it’s definitely better. Well, in some aspects it’s better than it used to be. There are definitely efforts being made. The WordPress accessibility team works really, really hard to try to make sure that. The other teams are thinking [00:02:00] about accessibility from the beginning to the end. Um, I would like to see accessibility being more prioritized and thought of first, instead of being kind of added in later.

Because I think the end result ends up being a lot better in those cases. And I know there’s been a lot of, a lot of fighting and a lot of high emotions about it all. The, um, the mission of WordPress is to democratize publishing. And I don’t think you can actually democratize publishing if you are excluding users from being able to use your platform.

Matt: Yeah, I a hundred percent agree. Um, one of the last sort of like quotes you ended with, and I’m glad you ended it with it cause it helps me segue into this question was, uh, there are no guarantees to, I guess, making a hundred percent accessible ready website, right? Um, because. Um, there’s probably a lot of different factors, maybe a lot of different contexts people can be using a website [00:03:00] in.

But then of course, like, technology is ever evolving. So it had me really thinking, like, where this stuff can be kind of scary. Well, it’s a two part question. First, it might be kind of scary for a freelancer or a small agency owner. To want to get into this space because they might feel like, uh, you know, this is, this might be too difficult for me to learn and understand, and if I do it wrong, I, I could get in trouble.

Um, do you have like a sort of fear factor moment or a way to get over that hump of, you know, you don’t have to know it all or do it all to get into this space? Or, or do you have to dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s to say that you are an accessible, ready kind of freelancer slash agency?

Natalie: Yeah, you definitely do need to take some steps to educate yourself about it.

And I think you need to be clear with your clients, right? You cannot guarantee them that your website will be 100 percent accessible. You cannot guarantee them that nobody will sue them for their [00:04:00] website being inaccessible. Because even if their website is accessible, they can still get sued. It’s the beauty of the American justice system.

You know, somebody could sue you for walking down the street the wrong way because they didn’t like it. So Um, you have to be clear about what your level of expertise is and what you know, and don’t be afraid to call in somebody to help you. So there are accessibility consultants who are available who could come in and, you know, help you look over a website you’re building, help you make a few decisions about how to make things better.

You can always do that. You don’t have to try to just go it alone.

Matt: Yeah, that’s fantastic advice. It’s something that. The WordPress community is great at like connecting with other people, but then also like the agency world is not so good at it because we’re always, well, having a, being a previous agency owner, I know it’s just kind of, you’re, you’re kind of afraid to bring in like another expert into the mix, but it’s okay because you’re servicing the client and the [00:05:00] client’s happy.

And that’s like the overall goal, right? With a lot of this stuff. The second part of this question stat slash statement that you had me thinking of was this can also be a particular advantage, right? If you’re a freelancer slash agency, like getting educated on this stuff, that’s your, that can be your particular advantage, whether you’re servicing nonprofit clients specifically or not.

Like this could be your foot forward to stand out from the pack. Because it is hyper competitive out there, right? And if you can spend the time learning this stuff, and getting educated, and doing the work, that’s a particular advantage for freelancers and agencies. Not a direct question, but more of a statement if you have any kind of, like, feeling or response to that.

Natalie: Yeah, it’s absolutely true. Um, especially, I’ve done a lot of work for non profit organizations that deal with disability justice. And they will, they are specifically looking for a web developer and a web designer to build their website for them that knows about that accessibility because it’s [00:06:00] their mission as an organization and so it’s very important to them.

So it does set you apart from other people in the field.

Matt: Yeah, fantastic stuff. Natalie, thanks for hanging out today. Where can folks go to find you on the web to say thanks?

Natalie: Um, our main company website is nsquared. io.