A Learning Journey to Accessibility

Anne:
Hello everyone. Welcome to yet another session of the notorious, not-so-notorious-yet accessibility podcast at Do the Woo. With me today is Maestro Stevens from Iconic Templates. Now, some of you may know him, while to some of you, he may come as a total surprise. But I promise you, this is going to be a very entertaining conversation about scalability, accessibility, being part of the WordPress community—especially in that regard—and, of course, e-commerce and accessibility. But as usual, we are trying to get guests on the show who are in the midst of learning about or working with accessibility, instead of always featuring people who already know everything. There are so many people who don’t know yet, and we’re going to get the other specialists on for sure at some point. The goal is that we all learn how to implement accessibility in e-commerce because it’s incredibly important. We are all learning, we are all struggling, and we are all going to get there at some point. Also with us today is Bob Dunn, and today Bob is representing Taeka, who, due to circumstances, couldn’t be with us today. He is here to protect all of you from me and Maestro talking too much about unrelated things, because we like to babble, right, Bob?

BobWP:
Right? Yeah, yeah. I’ll be the podcast bouncer, and that’s it. I’m always accessible to do these things.

Anne:
Yeah, that’s wonderful. So, for people who don’t know me, a little bit of my background: I’m an accessibility specialist and a big mouth in the WordPress community. I love to connect people, I love to learn, I love to teach, and I hope I can bring you some extras every time we do this. And Maestro, I would say let’s go. Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself and what you’re doing in daily life?

Maestro:
Yes, yes. Thank you, Anne, and thank you, Bob, as well for having me on. I’ve been greatly anticipating this opportunity. But just a little bit about me—as Anne already said, my name is Maestro Stevens, and I am the owner and founder of Iconic Templates. We are a template-based platform for WordPress. It mainly came from me being an advocate and a user of other people’s templates for years, starting my journey, I would say, back in 2008. So, I’m no WordPress “old-schooler” as I call it, like the people who came in way before me. But I definitely love the fact that WordPress has given me opportunities, flexibility, and new lessons as far as community and developing websites.

Anne:
Alright, so what is your accessibility angle, just to put you on the spot?

Maestro:
When it comes to e-commerce and accessibility, I would say I am a newbie on the cusp of becoming an intermediate person. For me, accessibility is still an ocean of wonders and questions. I’m not a technical person in terms of development, and what I’ve learned about accessibility has a lot to do with development practices and design practices as well. I’m neither a designer nor a developer, so my experience is more relatable to the average person. But what I’ve learned is the importance and necessity of accessibility, because there are many more people in the world who I assumed could access websites, but they can’t because of various disabilities or disadvantages. So, I’m learning. I’m a work in progress, but I’ve learned a lot so far. In the e-commerce world, especially, it’s critical—because people can’t buy what they can’t see. If they can’t access your website or experience it in certain ways, how can you expect them to purchase your product?

Anne:
And it’s not just about seeing, right? It’s always interesting that accessibility is thought of as something for people who are blind, but the group of people affected is so much larger. You’re missing out on a ton of conversions if your website is filled with sliders and moving elements. Accessibility as an important part of your conversion strategy is something people tend to forget. And I know you like to look at things from a larger perspective. I find it interesting that you don’t have a development background, because that’s important for everyone to know, especially when creating websites. I mean, WordPress enables us to install WooCommerce and create a webshop without knowing what we’re doing. In a sense, it guides us, which is wonderful. But if you’re working at a professional level, you have to understand—just like with bookkeeping—you don’t have to know how to do your own bookkeeping, but you need to be able to read the numbers. So, I’m challenging you here. This is what we call “shooting at an open goal.” Now, if there are conversion advantages to accessibility, especially in e-commerce, what advantages do you see? Can you expand on that? And I have the same question for Bob, actually.

Maestro:
Yeah, I’ll start with this: The reason I didn’t mention conversions is that I always try to speak to a C-level grade student audience. I consider myself a C-level student. And when I start using big words, people start asking more questions, and they get confused. So, I like to come up with little metaphors, similes, or simple ways to explain things that the average person can understand. Then I give them the “juice,” as we say. So yes, you’re absolutely right. It is about conversions. For example, if you have a button on your website that’s a certain color or it’s developed in a way that makes it jittery or weird, it can make it hard for someone to commit to moving forward to the next step, whether that’s a sale, a subscription, or joining your email list. So, in my opinion, that’s one example of how accessibility can affect conversions—using buttons. As far as I know, links and buttons are what move us forward to the next step on the journey.

Anne:
Links and buttons—those are an interesting topic. I’ll keep a mental note to get back to that. Bob, what about you? What does accessibility in e-commerce mean to you?

BobWP:
Well, I agree a lot with what Maestro said. It’s interesting because I think about accessibility and wonder where we draw the line. I’ll give you an example. Today I was on a site ordering something. When I got to the checkout and entered my address, it gave me two lines—one for the first part of the address and one for the second part. Our address is quite long, and when I hit “next step,” it moved the second part of the address onto the first line, saying, “Your address is limited to 34 characters.” So, I had to think, “How can I adjust this to make it deliverable?” And while that might be more of a technical issue with the checkout form, it made me think about accessibility—this was frustrating to me, and I can see and think through the problem. But what kind of issues would this pose for others? It’s strange—these little things can create big problems. For instance, I get vertigo sometimes, and scrolling can be tough for me. But if something comes on the screen with wiggly or strange movements because someone is trying to be clever, it becomes challenging. So, yeah, it’s a constant challenge for far more people than we might imagine.

Anne:
Yeah, this is so true. Unfortunately, these issues are hard to measure when talking to companies. Whether it’s in the U.S., where they need to be compliant, or here in Europe, where the European Accessibility Act is going to hit like a tsunami, it’s important to understand. You are naming examples here, and they’re hard to measure. Companies complain that they pay SEO specialists thousands every month, and they celebrate when their click rate increases by half a percent. But at some point, they’ll notice that conversions are failing or bounce rates are high. You can spend all the money you want on SEO, but you’ll still have unexplained bounces if your website isn’t accessible. You can’t measure assistive technology usage—that would be an incredible breach of privacy. This is always a tough discussion between shop owners and companies that need to make their shops accessible. They want numbers, but common sense should also play a role. If you’re working on a webshop, whether you’re a developer or not, you need to understand basic things—like buttons and links. Few people outside of coding know that a button does something and a link goes somewhere. People like to wrap links in buttons that look like buttons. In hardcore accessibility circles, people will say, “Don’t do that,” but we’re talking about inclusion here, and everyone should be included, not just people who rely on assistive technology. We are all sensitive to certain stimuli, and we can all benefit from accessibility features. Have you ever tried turning your screen to black and white on your iPhone?

Maestro:
Yes! To your point, I’ve noticed a trend where people are becoming more conscious of these things. In email templates, for instance, you can’t control the email client—whether it’s Gmail or Yahoo (does anyone still use Yahoo? I’m sure someone does!). And it’s interesting that with Apple’s iOS updates, they’re allowing users to change the gradients on icons. But when it comes to color changes, I’ve noticed that people who are accessibility-conscious will often change the default link color from blue to something more legible in dark mode, for example. Chrome, Safari, and other browsers all handle accessibility in their own ways, but they don’t always follow the same rulebook.

Anne:
Doesn’t that scare you a little?

Maestro:
Yes! It’s both fascinating and scary. There are certain things you just can’t control. But what can you do?

Anne:
And going back to Bob’s example about the form—this is where UI and UX go hand in hand. People say you can’t make beautiful accessible websites, which is nonsense. But something practical like a form—I love it when a form is coded so it asks, “Do you want to autofill this?” That’s not just helpful for jittery users—it’s helpful for everyone. Accessibility is primarily intended for people who use assistive technology, but then it helps everyone else too. And it’s interesting to see how page builders and themes handle this. Some of them are like, “Hey, look at this beautiful form widget,” but wouldn’t it be great if you didn’t have to worry whether the browser will offer autofill options?

Maestro:
Yes, and I’ve seen this a lot, especially with email templates. Different email clients handle accessibility differently, and it’s the same with browsers. But going back to your point—there are so many things we can’t control.

Anne:
Yeah, it’s like when you’re working with page builders or themes, and they offer these forms that look great, but are they accessible? You need to test that.

Maestro:
Exactly. And this goes back to how accessibility affects conversions. If people can’t use your forms, how can they complete their purchase? It’s all connected.

Anne:
Absolutely. So, we’ve covered a lot of ground here. Do you have any final thoughts, Maestro, before we wrap up?

Maestro:
Just that accessibility is a journey. I’m still learning, and I hope to continue improving. It’s important for everyone to start somewhere, and we can all make a difference by making our websites more accessible.

Anne:
Thank you so much for joining us today, Maestro. It was a pleasure having you on the show.

Maestro:
Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure.