The third edition of The Accessibility Show with Nathan Wrigley of WP Builds dropped early this morning, and I have to say that I’m really enjoying this show. First of all, chatting with Nathan is a bright spot in my day every time – he really is the nicest man I know.

But I’m also finding it fascinating to go into the WordPress showcase and pick out just one issue to highlight as an accessibility problem. Focusing on one issue can really expose the variety of different ways something can be done – whether for better or for worse.

We always try to mention in the show that we’re not out to shame the builders of these websites, and I really do believe this – it’s just that the WordPress showcase is specifically dedicated to showing what you can do with WordPress, and it’s a handy place to find sources.

What this process highlights is the ubiquity of accessibility problems. I sometimes think that people I talk to about accessibility think it’s a rare problem. That poor accessibility is the exception; something that only happens when unskilled developers aren’t doing their jobs right. But the reality is that poor accessibility is the norm. There are many highly skilled developers who routinely fail to account for accessibility. This doesn’t mean they aren’t skilled; it means they have a specific and important gap in their knowledge.

If you don’t see complaints about accessibility from users who need it, that’s not because you don’t have accessibility problems: it’s because people with disabilities can’t spend 16 hours a day writing complaints. Instead, they just move on and try to find something they can use.

I picked newsletter subscription forms for this episode because it’s a great way to look at forms in an extremely narrow way. These are among the simplest forms you’ll find online; but most of the accessibility problems with forms aren’t due to complexity.

I hope you enjoy watching this episode as much as I enjoyed recording it!

(Also, I failed to announce episode two, so maybe you want to take a look at that one, too.)