WordPress Accessibility Day 2025 brought together experts, developers, designers and content creators to explore how to make websites more inclusive and accessible for all users.
This year’s event featured a wide range of talks that went beyond the usual considerations of colour contrast, font sizes and mobile tap targets.
Vitaly Friedman shared practical guidance on designing for a diverse audience, including children, older adults and people with dyslexia or colour blindness. His session, Accessible Design Patterns for 2025, highlighted how thoughtful design can improve the experience for all users while emphasising real-world testing with screen readers and other assistive technologies.
James Warnken offered a powerful perspective in Why Accessibility Matters: From A Blind/Visually Impaired Perspective. He challenged developers and designers to look beyond standard guidelines and focus on features that genuinely impact users. From keyboard-only navigation to magnification and high contrast modes, his session provided actionable insights for improving the accessible user experience in WordPress projects.
Recordings of all sessions will be available on demand on the WP Accessibility Day YouTube channel with captions, making it easy to catch up on any talks you missed.
Automation and AI were recurring themes, with sessions exploring how technology can both help and hinder accessibility. Helen Hou-Sandi demonstrated how continuous AI tools can be embedded into the development process to detect and alert teams to accessibility issues early. Rose Kivuva examined the risks of automated systems, showing how AI-powered chatbots and image generators can unintentionally exclude certain users if accessibility is not considered from the start.
Equally important was the focus on real inclusion in testing. Lucy Collins of Web Usability delivered a practical guide on running user testing sessions that genuinely include disabled people. Lucy’s talk, Real Inclusion: How To Run Insightful and Respectful User Testing With Disabled People, emphasised ethical practices, meaningful engagement and the importance of including disabled voices in the design and development process.
We previously collaborated with Lucy and the team at Web Usability on The Marketer’s Guide to Accessibility, highlighting the value of these approaches in creating actionable and inclusive recommendations.
We worked closely with our partners at Web Usability to put together an extensive guide. Aiming to help modern-day marketers adhere to accessibility guidelines and standards. Download our FREE accessibility guide to learn more.
Our work with Ennismore was another highlight in accessible WordPress development. Ennismore needed accessible, multilingual hotel websites for their global expansion while ensuring compliance with WCAG 2.1, the Equality Act, and ADA standards.
Our team developed the SO/ Hotels and TRIBE Hotels sites in partnership with accessibility specialists, Web Usability. Using both automated and manual testing, we delivered websites that balance compliance with striking imagery, immersive interactions, and a seamless user experience, resulting in inclusive sites for global users and a scalable platform for future launches.
Building on this commitment to accessibility and performance, we’ve also conducted in-depth audits for our retained clients, AAB Group and Medivet. These reviews identified opportunities to enhance accessibility, usability, and content management efficiency, with improvement plans now being implemented to strengthen their digital experiences and ensure ongoing compliance.
WP Accessibility Day 2025 reinforced the importance of accessibility in WordPress development, showing that it goes far beyond guidelines. From thoughtful design patterns to inclusive testing and careful use of automation, the event offered practical insights for building websites that truly work for everyone.
Recordings of all sessions will be available on demand with captions on the WP Accessibility Day YouTube channel, providing a valuable resource for anyone looking to improve accessibility in their WordPress projects.
Our client work demonstrates how these principles can be applied in real-world projects to deliver inclusive experiences and meet key accessibility and legal requirements.
Marketing Manager
Joy is Filter’s voice to the outside world, developing our content and marketing strategies, and communicating the great work that we do to the widest audience. Joy manages our website content, social media channels, resource centre, the UnFILTERed video podcast series, our Enterprise Guide eBook series and every aspect of our marketing activity.
