I’ve been teaching a course through LinkedIn Learning since 2015 focused on teaching accessibility in WordPress. The course is currently in its 3rd edition, released on June 9th, 2023. This version of the course includes almost 3 hours of material covering a wide range of topics.
The course provides introductory materials about the principles of accessibility, the legal framework for accessibility internationally, and explanations of assistive technology and how it works.
The course goes further in depth on how to write and create content that’s accessible in WordPress, how to test themes and plugins to identify accessibility gaps, and talks about what kinds of concerns you need to think about when picking the plugins that will power your site.
I also give a wide variety of development tips for people creating themes or writing plugins, so that the whole WordPress ecosystem can be improved from the ground up.
What’s in WordPress: Accessibility?
The course is written in 8 chapters, each covering a fundamental area of knowledge for managing accessibility in WordPress:
- What is Web Accessibility? An introduction to the fundamentals of accessibility and assistive technology.
- Accessibility and WordPress How do the different pieces of WordPress influence the accessibility of your site differently?
- Accessibility in your Theme Looking at design, site architecture, and tools for building accessible themes.
- Using Accessible WordPress Plugins How do you know whether a plugin is accessible? Will adding this feature cause you problems down the road?
- Accessibility Plugins for WordPress What are the tools available for improving and assessing the accessibility of your WordPress site? What are the advantages, if any, to using tools custom-designed for WordPress?
- Authoring Accessible Content How to use text, media, audio, and video accessibly in WordPress.
- Testing for Accessibility What are some of the tools and techniques for assessing the accessibility of your website? What can you do to learn some key information quickly?
- Remediation Workshop I walk you through a specific example, how you find the issue, figure out where it comes from, and what do you change.