The first WordPress Accessibility Day was 6 years ago today. It started at 17:45 UTC on October 2nd, 2020, when I gave the opening remarks. It certainly took a very different path than the one towards the 2026 edition, which starts in just a few days, on October 7th.
Obviously, October 2020 was in the height of the pandemic. Unlikely many events, the pandemic didn’t force WordPress Accessibility Day to become a virtual event – we had always planned it to be virtual, having decided on a model very similar to Inclusive Design 24, which finished its 13th event just last week.
The pandemic did profoundly impact our organizing process, however. People had to drop off the team abruptly, due to the many external stresses and challenges in everybody’s lives. It certainly made those last weeks a strain. I personally broke down in tears during the opening remarks, when dedicating the event to the memory of Joseph Karr O’Connor, who had died in January of that year.
The first WordPress Accessibility Day was 6 years ago today, but it’s not the 7th event coming up; only the 6th. After the stresses of 2020, we didn’t have the impetus to keep it going. It wouldn’t have restarted at all if it wasn’t for Amber Hinds pushing me to re-start the event for 2022.
What it takes to keep going…
The people. It’s all about the people. The founding group of organizers were great, and worked hard to put on a great event. But there were only about a dozen organizers at that time. This year, we have 29. The first year, none of us had ever done this before. This year, 9 of the 10 team leads are returning from last year, and our board members have done this a combined 16 times.
Believe it or not, having a deep network of experienced leads makes everything a lot easier… I can’t say thank you enough to the great people who have worked to keep this event going, year after year.
The first year, the event was completely free, there was no registration required, and everything was streamed on YouTube.
Now, we require registration, and everything is streamed through Zoom’s Events platform, which costs several thousand dollars to use. That’s not a frivolous expense, though – it’s because we made the decision to add live American Sign Language to the event in 2024, and there simply aren’t many platforms that make that possible. Zoom, while it certainly has flaws, allows us to provide ASL and allow the viewer to decide what video to prioritize and to re-size it as they want to. That has a real and significant benefit for our attendees.
But it does increase our costs.
This year is the first year (not including the first one) that we’ve struggled to raise sufficient funds to cover all of our annual costs.
From everything I understand, we’re far from alone here. I’ve seen plenty of people sharing about events being postponed or cancelled due to funding issues. I’m also seeing content creators and web development educators posting about how their books or training video revenues have plummeted. It’s clear that the world is changing in some difficult ways.
WordPress Accessibility Day is not at risk – at least, not right now. We have always budgeted conservatively, and ever since we became a 501c3 non-profit, we’ve maintained a balance to help protect us against a bad year.
What can you do?
The main thing you can do is support the event! Register today!
If you can make a donation at registration, obviously that helps to defray our costs and ensure that we can put the event on next year. But if you can’t, that’s really just fine. We want to build a vibrant community who cares about accessibility, and who want to build websites right!
Have something to contribute?