[00:00:20] Nathan Wrigley: Hello there and welcome once again to the WP Builds podcast. You've reached episode number 483, which is getting pretty close to 500, it's just occurring to me. It's entitled, why accessibility should be every WordPress developer's priority with Danielle Zaccaro.
It was published on Thursday, the 3rd of September, 2026. My name's Nathan Wrigley, and in a few short minutes I will be having that conversation with Danielle. But before then, a few bits of housekeeping.
If you like what we do at WP Builds, head to us subscribe page. wpbuilds.com/subscribe. Get yourself on our email list and we will notify you when we produce this, the podcast. It comes out on a Thursday, but also we do the This week in WordPress show that comes out on a Tuesday and we record it on a Monday. I've taken a few weeks off, but we should be back on the waggon. Hopefully this coming Monday. We'll have to wait and see how that transpires, but I hope it'll happen.
But also, and curiously, I am releasing a podcasting app. It is a end to end podcasting solution. I'm not revealing too many details about it, but I can assure you if you are even vaguely thinking about running a podcast, or already have one, this app does literally everything that you could possibly want to do with your podcast. I say that safe in the knowledge that there's probably a thousand things that it can't do, but you get the point. I'm fairly happy with it, and pretty confident about it.
If you'd like to find out more and get some founders pricing, a once in a lifetime opportunity to get some really incredible discounts on the pricing, we are looking for people to help us out with that.
The URL is a bit weird 'cause it's my personal website, nathanwrigley.com/app. So nathanwrigley.com/app. So Wrigley, by the way, has a W in it. So it's N-A-T-H-A-N-W-R-I-G-L-E-Y.com/app. Go there, fill out the form and we'll let you know. I really, really would urge you to do it. It will be definitely worth your while if you hop on board at the beginning.
Anyway, there we go. Enough of the self-promotional stuff. If you would like to sponsor WP Builds, head to our advertise page to find out more about that. wpbuilds.com/advertise.
Okay, what have we got for you today? Well, today I am chatting with Danielle Zarcaro. Danielle talks to us today about accessibility. That is the thing that they have made their life about.
Accessibility, obviously very important in the WordPress space. So we get a bit of an introduction to Danielle, talk about the interest in accessibility. Where did that come from? Where do you gain expertise? How do you gain that knowledge? What is the point of doing it, and what are the barriers currently? Whether there's a legal, moral, component to it all. Whether you should be retrofitting or building new loads and loads in here. Plus also a little bit towards the end about a tool that Danielle is building in the email space. So keep your ears peeled for that.
I hope that you enjoy it.
I am joined on the podcast by Danielle Zarcaro. Hello, Danielle.
[00:03:31] Danielle Zarcaro: Hello
[00:03:32] Nathan Wrigley: We've been putting the world to rights. We've been learning about the way Elizabethan English sounds and all sorts of things in the background.
[00:03:39] Danielle Zarcaro: the way the
[00:03:39] Nathan Wrigley: That's, yeah... Oh, we had a whole conversation about how the internet works.
it's a miracle, but that's not why we're here today. Daniele is joining us. I, think it's probably fair to say that the conversation will center around accessibility and those kind of things. We may stray off into different directions. Time will tell. But, thank you for joining me, and my first question to you, if that's all right, is it's a very banal one, and I ask everybody the same thing, and it's basically is an opportunity for you to introduce yourself so that we know a little bit more about you.
it's over to you, really. Just give us your little bio. I don't know if you wanna keep it in the tech space or the WordPress space, but whatever you like
[00:04:18] Danielle Zarcaro: Sure, yeah. I can try to keep it a little bit short. I've been doing word- WordPress for, I don't know, at this point, 12 years, 13
[00:04:27] Nathan Wrigley: Okay.
[00:04:28] Danielle Zarcaro: that. and happened upon accessibility, and then started specializing it for about five or so years. it's been, I've hopped from agency to agency locally.
I, came across an opportunity to leave a job that wasn't a good fit and found myself searching for some contract stuff, and then went out on my own probably, eight years ago now.
it's been a, a really interesting ride and, took up crochet as a way to not be on screens all the
[00:05:05] Nathan Wrigley: That's a good one
[00:05:06] Danielle Zarcaro: do watch a lot of TV as well as a way to, decompress, and so it just became too much, and so I started crocheting too,
[00:05:13] Nathan Wrigley: C- can I ask you about the crocheting? I'm so sorry. do you have to ... D- does it involve your eyeballs? For example, my mother used to knit and, that was like the de-stress, but the knitting was muscle memory, so she could be talking to me whilst knitting. But I get the feeling with crochet, like your eyes have gotta be on the object that you're trying to crochet, if
[00:05:35] Danielle Zarcaro: Yeah, I've seen people do it without looking. I think... I did recently knitting, and it's something I will continue to do, but it does seem more difficult because you do have to insert into
each of the stitches, so you do have to know. So I guess it depends on, what yarn you're using, how much you can feel each stitch, how much you do a certain stitch, and if you can. So you- I probably could do it less.
[00:06:01] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.
[00:06:02] Danielle Zarcaro: I'll try to do it without looking for a couple of stitches
[00:06:04] Nathan Wrigley: had some crazy wobbly line.
[00:06:07] Danielle Zarcaro: Yeah.
[00:06:08] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. I love finding out what people do as hobbies. But, anyway, we'll, wrestle it back to the, question in hand, which is accessibility. Can I ask though, a serious point, you said, I don't know, like eight years ago or five years ago or something like that, you found yourself being interested in accessibility.
Why that? Have you ever examined, have you ever looked back and think, of all the things that you could have done, like you could have delved into, I don't know, specializing in graphic design or, code development, plugin development. What was it about accessibility that sort of captured you and made you interested in it?
[00:06:42] Danielle Zarcaro: It's a really good question too, because I did have the opportunity. I was never really good... I'm good at adjusting designs and even writing. Like I'm, I've written stuff and I'm good at editing and like starting from a prompt or... So I knew that like creating from nothing was not really for me. And so I did go, went to school for English education, dropped the education part, just did English, then found, a community college that had, like web development side.
So I did start off going directly into the development, but, I kinda had my hands in a little bit of everything, and would do a lot of editing of sites. And so I think I was like building some kind of, I don't know if it was an accordion or like something a little bit more advanced, and I came across something related to an ARIA label or an ARIA something and I was like, "What is, like what is this?"
I hadn't heard of it before. And then I got mad that I hadn't been told it before. And I was like, "Why is, wh- why is this not... It's a thing that makes it work for a whole portion of the internet. why is this not a thing I knew about?" And then so I just dove deeper into that, and then it became part of just what I...
I was like, of course I'm gonna do it now that I know it." And then it just grew from there. So I think that was the first moment. I tend to do stuff 'cause it irritates me and I wanna change
[00:08:10] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.
[00:08:11] Danielle Zarcaro: like I don't want it, things to shouldn't be a thing. I need to change
[00:08:15] Nathan Wrigley: Right
[00:08:15] Danielle Zarcaro: I included that in my sort of, stuff
[00:08:19] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. A- and was there a m-- so th- this question may not land at all in that I might say it and you think, I don't think that anyway." But I, was wondering when was the moment where you realized that the knowledge that you had acquired was, how to word this, in excess of, what most people have already acquired?
And really what I mean by that is th- there is obviously people out there who are, this is just what they do. there's a handful of people in the WordPress space who do it, and who's dedicated a lot of time to it. And it's pretty clear that they've got all the chops and credentials to do that.
I wonder when the moment was when you looked at your own backstory and thought, "Oh, okay, I've come a long way. Maybe I've got something to share at this point," as opposed to, instead of taking knowledge in, I'm now in a position where I can reverse that and give knowledge out. that may be recent, it may be years ago, maybe you don't identify with that at all
[00:09:14] Danielle Zarcaro: Yeah, I think it's something that as you're seeing like, "Oh, wait a minute, nobody's doing this," and and then you just see less and less stuff doing things the right way, and you're like... I, don't think... I think most people who are good at what they do or have a lot of knowledge, like the more the more you don't the more...
It's like the more the more you realize you don't know
[00:09:42] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. Yeah
[00:09:45] Danielle Zarcaro: there's the always gonna be that like, "Oh, these people know more than me. I'm not an expert in this," or I- that it's like a version of that imposter syndrome that I think you're always, you have to become comfortable with having
[00:09:59] Nathan Wrigley: Right
[00:09:59] Danielle Zarcaro: for someone like me.
And so I think it did take a little bit to convince myself that was knowledgeable enough even though I wasn't as knowledgeable as the people who've been doing it for even longer than me. But I think it's just something where you see enough people doing it wrong, and you're like, "Wow, let me see if I can tell them to do it right."
taking that instead of trying to I, yeah, I don't know, be like, "You should know how to do
[00:10:33] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.
[00:10:33] Danielle Zarcaro: it wrong,
[00:10:34] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah
[00:10:35] Danielle Zarcaro: "Oh, this is actually, I don't know if you knew this, but this is wrong and you should do it
[00:10:39] Nathan Wrigley: Right
[00:10:40] Danielle Zarcaro: there's always that aspect for, to accessibility that's like you should do it different now. and there's that struggle between like telling someone what to do and like being nice about it so that they don't get defensive about it. I think there's a lot of juggling, that goes on in the accessibility space, and especially when you come across the same issues all the time,
[00:11:03] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah,
[00:11:04] Danielle Zarcaro: it,
does, like wear on the people that are...
So like anytime you come across like an accessibility person that seems like they're being crabby about something, it's probably not you, and try to just take it
for what it
[00:11:17] Nathan Wrigley: yeah. that's the thing about being knowledgeable, isn't it? Once you've gained, like a weight of knowledge, y- so there's a couple of things here. The first one is once you prize open an aspect, for example, accessibility, and you begin to explore it, y- I imagine you quickly realize how much there is, and you could probably spend a whole lifetime just, just on that thing, and there are several people who do that.
But also, once you get knowledgeable at a particular thing, irritation is the wrong word, but it's a little bit about what you were saying there. you look around and people making the blunders that you used to make, and why wouldn't you put your oar in and say, hang on a minute, because there is a better way of doing that."
But not only that, it's not just a superior way because it's superior. It's superior because there's a whole phalanx of people who, if you just do this one thing, can actually read that now, or can actually open that, or can actually click that, whereas before they couldn't. There was a black hole of a website completely unavailable to a class of people, and now it's available.
And, I think banging the gong on accessibility and being, how to describe this, being a bit, a bit forthright about it. Let's go with that. I think that's a good thing. yeah, that's, great.
[00:12:36] Danielle Zarcaro: Yeah. It's hard because you're having to juggle different audiences too, because you have, the people who build their own websites, and so your beef is with them to a certain extent, but the beef is with the p- the things that are allowing them to build the sites and, not making things that are available to them that are accessible.
So Squarespace does this in this way and you can't fix it unless you do this. And then, Elementor does this in this way and you can't fix it unless you do this. So it's like that, but then there's also that sort of enterprise level of frustration where people aren't empowered to make those changes.
get, advertised the Woobles like crochet kits, and then I went on to see one of them and like the contrast was all
[00:13:22] Nathan Wrigley: Oh
[00:13:22] Danielle Zarcaro: all these things, but you're not empowering. you just have some person who's inputting something that some manager told them to put on a
[00:13:30] Nathan Wrigley: Right
[00:13:30] Danielle Zarcaro: And so you're not like empowering these people to make decisions because if they need to change this color they're gonna have to go talk to the manager who's then gonna have to go get the color approved who's gonna ... Like people just do what they need to do to get through their day and so it's this really complicated web of like it's not just that the site has a bug it's these like sort of systems that are making it a lot harder to change that.
[00:13:51] Nathan Wrigley: So I've been alive now for 50 cough years, and, and during that time, I remember walking around in the, real world, and I remember, that there was almost nothing given over to accessibility in the real world. the like, doorsteps and stairs. Shops could open quite happily, and they didn't have to provide a ramp or, some kind of button which would enable the door to open, and so on and so forth.
However, since, I'm gonna say kinda like the 1970s, maybe the 1980s, that began to change, and legislation came in, and not only was it kinda like morally a good thing to do, but it became a legal thing that you had to do. It, I, find it so curious that the internet, which came along after that whole wave of figuring out that we need to make the world accessible, the internet came along, and n- that, yeah, that didn't happen.
Like, why did, why was it not mandatory from the beginning of the internet? The answer is I'll never know. I don't know why that was.
[00:14:58] Danielle Zarcaro: I could speculate. I think it probably has something to do with, the people who built it didn't have that particular need.
[00:15:07] Nathan Wrigley: there you go. Yeah
[00:15:08] Danielle Zarcaro: was originally conceived as a sort of, text-based thing that you're contacting this place with, and then, the browser came along, and so you have...
people aren't thinking about we currently are, which is it's a bunch of people using this to communicate and get along and, do all these things, and it was just a way to, share your, thoughts
[00:15:31] Nathan Wrigley: Yes
[00:15:32] Danielle Zarcaro: And then so it just wasn't this thing people who were maybe visually impaired in some way, they didn't have access to it in the first place. They were too busy trying to, get, world accommodations, and then so you just have this, hobbyist in their garage making the internet. And then it pro- like, I'd have to look up
[00:15:50] Nathan Wrigley: No, the, yeah.
[00:15:52] Danielle Zarcaro: screen readers
[00:15:53] Nathan Wrigley: This scans though.
[00:15:54] Danielle Zarcaro: along.
[00:15:55] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah,
[00:15:55] Danielle Zarcaro: And then, then the people...
Then it became this runaway train where, it, got overlooked as a feature that should be included in things. It's just the nature of things. It's the same with the laws, right? not... It's, hard because you have, even, so if I'm, renting my... I'm living in an apartment.
I'm renting my apartment, and I need my mother-in-law to get up the stairs. I can't do anything about that. It's the same with, somebody who runs a shop who, is renting the space. They're, it's already built. It's already... They can't... It's up to the people
who are building the
[00:16:30] Nathan Wrigley: yeah,
[00:16:31] Danielle Zarcaro: and they're trying to increase, revenue and cut corners and do all these things.
And I think legislation is a way to get the people who us to care in a way that makes them accountable. And yeah,
[00:16:49] Nathan Wrigley: so
[00:16:49] Danielle Zarcaro: laws that are happening bring that accountability in the
[00:16:52] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, I guess the nice thing about the internet, at least you can retrofit it easily. it's, You can't retrofit your apartment block, not easily or inexpensively. y- really giant amounts of money to make that kind of thing happen. But the internet, you can do it, and I suppose one of the messages when you wrote to me and we got into, exchanging show notes and things like that, one of the things that you were, keen to discuss was that we can retrofit one bit at a time.
It's not like we have to open up the jigsaw puzzle box and the jigsaw puzzle is done for us. It's more like, okay, there's all the pieces. Now it's time to put the pieces together and slowly but surely we'll arrive where we arrive, which is the completed jigsaw puzzle, which is, supposed to sound like a pos-
[00:17:41] Danielle Zarcaro: I like that because all, first of all, all puzzles are different, right? there's this person who's started putting out all edge piece puzzles or whatever, and
[00:17:49] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah,
[00:17:50] Danielle Zarcaro: level's a
[00:17:50] Nathan Wrigley: I do that.
[00:17:51] Danielle Zarcaro: to start.
[00:17:52] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.
[00:17:52] Danielle Zarcaro: yeah, they're, they're... their marketing and stuff, too.
It's, I, like, it's, Yatch or something. They're, a lot of fun, and if I had all the money, I would be buying every one of their products. But, so they put out an edge piece puzzle, and, it's just a different... so it's, a website that's got a lot of complexity.
It's a lot harder to put together. But, there are still things you can do, and then, when somebody sits down to put together a puzzle, everybody's got a different strategy. Maybe they put colors together or shapes together, or they start with the corners, or... there's just so many ways to go about putting that puzzle together, and, the important part is the starting, and you just have to be like, "Yeah, you know what?
I think I'm gonna put this puzzle together." if you don't have a strategy to do it, then you probably shouldn't put together the puzzle, and you shouldn't have a website if you're not gonna, put the effort in. You put all this effort into creating content and making images and doing all this stuff, and, don't you want people to see
[00:18:50] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, right
[00:18:51] Danielle Zarcaro: not gonna care about the people coming to your site, why have it in the first place?
[00:18:55] Nathan Wrigley: So the, idea I think for a lot of people is that accessibility is a, a scary retrofit process that they, they've... Maybe they've got a back- a backlog of 50, 20, whatever, 100 websites that they've built over time. The,
the, the, the, landscape has moved a little bit now where we've got a legal framework.
We certainly do in this part of the world, and I'm sure the case is, all over the, the globe. There's bits and pieces of legislation dropping in different locales. And I think a misunderstanding is that you've got to have the full jigsaw piece. in other words, you've got to spend hours and hours making it perfect.
But that, that is not my understanding of it, at least at this point. So we're recording this in July 2026, and really it feels like you can be much more, thoughtful about this and sanguine about the legal hammer coming down, and you can, you tell me what it's like where you are. But it, feels to me as if, as really the, the Rubicon here is that you've got to be doing something.
You've got to, demonstrate that your journey a year ago, where you were a year ago, is different from where it is now. But it doesn't have to be carte blanche. It doesn't have to be the entire thing. It can just be one little bit. I don't know, you, maybe pick a, s- a, a thing. Like your contrast might be the thing, or underlining the links might be a thing, or whatever it may be.
Is that the case where you are?
[00:20:22] Danielle Zarcaro: yeah. There were legislation that was supposed to go into effect for, government websites and things that got government
[00:20:32] Nathan Wrigley: Okay
[00:20:32] Danielle Zarcaro: there are certain laws that apply to that, but certain deadlines got pushed back a year or two years, depending on who you are. And so it's, a very fuzzy area right now.
I think certain states are trying to take steps to make the accessibility lawsuits, be legitimate. So instead of just crawling sites and sending out things and then going into court and wasting everyone's time, it has to be, like, somebody who's actually going to use the site, and they actually have to have a problem, and the person has to not have responded.
And so I think maybe California's trying to do that, and there's So there are certain states. We're this weird countries within a country kind of thing, so like you have these areas that are trying to do certain things, and then overall, however the country's gonna whatever they're gonna do.
But the more ... It's like privacy, right? if you're gonna have anybody who's going to your website in California at all, then you have to pay attention to, what their privacy laws are and what their, data takedown things are or whatever. And it, by having at least a couple of states care about that, it can then maybe, people in all of the states to have to adhere those requirements
[00:21:44] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, I remember having conversations several years ago before any of the legislation was on the books, but it, appeared to be coming. And there was a great fear that the ambulance-chasing lawyers were going to come out of the woodwork and just essentially do a Getty Images kind of approach. Just scrape the internet, find every single thing that could possibly be wrong anywhere, and then just with, with a really blunt instrument issue, legal letters which then people, that's just a whole mess.
That I don't know if that happened, but certainly I don't have any, I, don't have any experience of that happening. Like you say, perhaps, government websites where, you're filing your taxes and this is the only way to now do it is online. sorry, you don't have a choice about that because you can't exclude a proportional
Yeah.
[00:22:36] Danielle Zarcaro: tax
too that yeah, you can do it, but you gotta go hire somebody to pay i-
order to pay extra to then do
[00:22:43] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah
[00:22:44] Danielle Zarcaro: or like there's just no alternative. I, yeah, I think for a lot of regular people, doesn't matter as much 'cause they're not providing that, essential type
service.
and so it's more just, the wherewithal to know, this can't be read. people still do that in print. They're, like, printing, dark yellow on a bright yellow, and you're like, "Nobody can read that." nobody
can understand and
visit your event because they can't see what the date is.
so it's just just basic, usability things. Nobody can read your font. it's pretty and, but use that for, background or
[00:23:19] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah
[00:23:20] Danielle Zarcaro: So it's just the basic principles of good design. you're never gonna get everybody to do it right, but that could be what sets you apart in, somebody making the difference between somebody being like, oh, hey.
And it's, it, like I said, it's just bugs that are on your site that you decide to care enough to fix. if somebody's gonna sit there and try to contact you and your form doesn't work, the point?
The, your whole reason for this website is to have somebody contact you,
[00:23:48] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah
[00:23:48] Danielle Zarcaro: it's the same if...
I find forms and motion to be the most irritating aspects of things, and they're the most complex for, regular people. forms are so hard to get right just even for me, visually, and, to make sure that, things are indicating when errors are there and, am I supposed to do with this field?
Or, it timed out and didn't tell you, and now you have to refill it all out, and you're like, "Screw this, I'm not gonna fill out your stupid form."
[00:24:17] Nathan Wrigley: No,
[00:24:18] Danielle Zarcaro: And
[00:24:18] Nathan Wrigley: yeah.
[00:24:20] Danielle Zarcaro: it, th- it's the most irritating aspect of websites anyway, and then you're trying to use this and hit Enter, and, nothing happens, and it's because there's an error, but it didn't tell you that there's an error because you're not seeing the site, you're hearing the site.
And so it's yeah, I, think it's just these basic things that you care about people and, them to have a good experience when they come to your site.
[00:24:39] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.
[00:24:40] Danielle Zarcaro: want that?
[00:24:41] Nathan Wrigley: So when you, when, when, let's use an example of something that you've done. So i- this may be a client website, or it may be a website of your own, or what have you. what's been your approach to it? th- there's m- maybe low-hanging fruit, maybe that's a good phrase that we could use. what are some of the s- I'm doing air quotes, the simple things that you could do that you would recommend somebody to take a, a chunk out of their website.
to at least feel like I did the first step. I've got myself, the journey has begun. I can do this. I can achieve this. what would you be recommending that people take a look at? Let- let's just say that they've n- they haven't looked at their site at all from an accessibility point of view.
What have you done?
[00:25:24] Danielle Zarcaro: Yeah, I think if it's somebody that's on their own without any sort of previous
knowledge, I find I, I went about putting together a course because I found it very hard to get a hand- I was sitting there looking through things, and it, even for me to know, this something I already know? Is this a new thing?
It's all very scattershot where everybody's telling you a lot of random easy things you can do, and you don't know what to start with, and it's... So it's a little overwhelming. There's, so much information out there, but it's still very overwhelming, and people can ask their AI to do certain things, AI's been trained on the websites that exist,
[00:26:01] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, boy
[00:26:02] Danielle Zarcaro: not many of them are accessible.
And I've had it, give me something that I think I was trying to make, I don't even remember, something, and it was, like, adding an ARIA to it, and I'm like, "Yeah, normally that would be the case, but you're having me add this, 100 times, and it's gonna, read it out weird." And it was
like,
[00:26:20] Nathan Wrigley: oh,
[00:26:21] Danielle Zarcaro: ARIA shouldn't be
used, and so sometimes it should.
And AI can maybe help you Figure out the basics, but when, find doing is easier because it m- it. It integrates the idea. So yeah, reading and learning is good, but I think, yeah, just taking a look at your site. Start with a new thing that you're adding. you don't have to, go back and through
[00:26:46] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, that's a good idea. Yeah
[00:26:49] Danielle Zarcaro: you're adding a blog post, you're like, "Okay, what about what I'm doing can I do better?" And so you're like, "Oh, heading levels. Okay, so I'm adding, don't add two H1s, add one H1. Okay, cool." And then you're like, so what heading should come next?" And so you're learning about this thing that you're doing anyway. "Oh, I'm adding an image. Okay, text is fine. I've never really thought about what means necessarily. I just describe an image." And so you maybe do a little bit of research on, that, and there's a lot of great people who do a lot of great work on these sort of really granular aspects.
So it's like, okay, is it decorative or is it not? does... What's the context of this? How can I describe this? It's a chart. Should I do this? So it's like you're learning these little individual things as you do them, and then if you get a little bit of experience with how that process works, you can then apply that to the other aspects of the site.
So not maybe making the most impact with, a single blog post, but it does help you get used to that behavior of, adding that to your thought process, and then you can go back to, your most used pages. what's the number one page people go to? Is it the homepage? Is it this particular service page?
It's like, what's your main page? And then you go visit that page and see how you can improve it. And so it's... You need that base level of knowledge in order to be able to look at something and know how to fix it. if I'm auditing a site, that's a different process because I know what I'm doing and I can point somebody to...
It's usually, do it and then categorize it into, priority, high impact, That's gonna be the most important. anything that you can do globally, headers, footers, anything that is on multiple pages. If you have, a sort of a little widget area that's like a pre-footer that's on all the pages, do that.
then you down into, it's like there's a third vector there. It's like high priority, high impact, easy,
[00:28:52] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. Yeah
[00:28:53] Danielle Zarcaro: all those out of the way first, and then you can, have... do the hard stuff. sometimes you need someone else to come in and do the hard stuff, so maybe you take care of all the easy stuff that you know you can take care of.
There's a lot of ways to approach it, and it just fit it into whatever your process is.
[00:29:07] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. I, lo-
[00:29:09] Danielle Zarcaro: when I'm, doing an audit, and it's like priority n- for that particular site, right? You're not... I'm not talking about, all of accessibility, this is the highest priority. It's more like your site and based on all of the items that I have here, start with this one or start with these or yeah.
[00:29:25] Nathan Wrigley: I, I like the idea of doing the thing, just carry on doing the thing that you're doing, only do that thing better, and then make that part of the muscle memory, and then maybe tackle another thing better. And then once you've got, I don't know, five or six different approaches, new improved approaches, then maybe start scanning around for the, the things to do.
And, obviously, as you said, if you're a, an accessibility expert and you're doing coaching on that kind of thing, that's, different. Your job is to go and find literally everything I imagine, within reason, and then categorize those for them, so that they can take chunks out of it. Yeah.
[00:30:04] Danielle Zarcaro: yeah, it depends too, so that what I was talking about is helpful for
anybody, but mostly for people who just have their own
[00:30:11] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah
[00:30:12] Danielle Zarcaro: like an agency, a lot of it is, if you can audit your templates, usually where I start with people. So there's a, there's people out there who have created, ways to talk to your clients that you've already launched their sites, right?
So that's a, a topic that you have to feel confident enough to be like, "Hey, I've learned about this new thing and how important it is, and so I would like us to bring your previously launched sites, up to the new standards." And however you wanna approach that with your past clients, but the easiest way is obviously sites you haven't launched
yet.
You could just do it going forward. And so start with that template that you use with every single site, all those components that you have, all those different things. You can't account for every- you might need to change a heading level, but sure that, the, tab order is right, or making sure that like your starter has enough contrast, or just like having those standards built into the template. then you can it from... Then you already have that foundation built. So that's usually where I try to get people to start.
[00:31:17] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah
[00:31:18] Danielle Zarcaro: or I've, I, a lot of times I'll audit somebody's recently launched site to start so that we can get a good baseline and then anytime we can get to those templates, Or again, a lot of accessibility people will say it's start as early as possible too. If you can bring me in for a 30-minute call that we talk about your design and I can give you "Oh, hey, this is gonna be an accordion. There's a, a, block editor now widget or a block that it's an accordion built in.
It's got the accessibility in there. Oh, this is gonna be, um, you're gonna wanna bump up the contrast on this, background overlay color. Oh, make sure that this font size is th- this because of this re-" Like they just, I, can call out things in a design that you can then hand off to your developers, and then they,
[00:32:08] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.
[00:32:09] Danielle Zarcaro: take it from there hopefully.
[00:32:12] Nathan Wrigley: with all of this, the, it feels like you've obviously implemented this in the past in your business. Are there, any bits where you think... l- let's talk about it in the WordPress context. So h- let's just go for this. This is a pretty blunt question. WordPress is no one thing, so you could build with the block editor, you could build with page builder over here, or another page builder, or, w- whatever.
There's a million ways. Do you find on the whole, though, that WordPress as a tool is assistive with this? Or do you find that, it's a bit of a nightmare? you've gotta go through, okay, where's that? Where do we discover even where the ARIA label's gonna be kept? I know you won't be able to answer that because every interface is gonna be slightly different.
Maybe if we just take it as core WordPress, so you're using the block editor, just a vanilla version of WordPress. How does it actually do in your estimation? is it a benefit, net benefit, or just there are a lot of unpicking and additional learning that you've gotta do?
[00:33:12] Danielle Zarcaro: it's, the great thing about WordPress is it lets you access everything you need.
So at the base level, it is the easiest platform that I've
found to make accessible.
[00:33:24] Nathan Wrigley: good
[00:33:25] Danielle Zarcaro: even ones that give you access to the code, like Webflow, they still have certain things that are just a lot harder to do because you just don't have all the files.
You don't have all the access. Things aren't global where they should be. You only have this little box for code. WordPress, I think, anytime I'm remediating, a site, it's just a lot easier if it's in WordPress because I don't have to care. It's gonna be easier if it's the using core WordPress because it goes through this specific check of accessibility before things are launched.
There's an accessibility team. Whereas, builders, they may be relying on their developers who are doing all of the features to then also be accounting for... there's no sort of maybe official policy on accessibility, or they just say, "We care about it," and there's no, formal sort of process to check and make sure that's happening.
And have these maybe overworked developers that are also trying to, do this thing that they're not knowledgeable on and, don't have any formal training because they're too busy keeping up with all the bugs. And so it's, I think core WordPress, because of the way that it's structured, is gonna give you a better baseline. and there's less debt from the perspective of, having to maybe rebuild from scratch. You're getting a lot of these because of, the wherever the maturity point is right now, you're having these, these builders that have been around for a long time, and so there's quite a few of them that are doing these, sort of full rebuilds. you have Divi, what is it,
[00:34:57] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Yep
[00:34:59] Danielle Zarcaro: rebuilding in their version, and then you have, Oxygen relaunching. And so you have a lot of these things that are redoing it and maybe caring about accessibility, some more than others. And so you have to There, but there are people, like there's somebody that like just has a bunch of fixes for Divi.
And so like there are people that because there's so many different types of communities and stuff, you do have people that are trying to make these individual pockets more accessible as well. And so I just think, from the community as a whole, it's a lot easier. you have the sort of the, the beacon of, Equalize Digital who has this, this plugin that does a lot of great things in terms of exposing people to accessibility in the way that it should be approached rather than overlaying it or doing whatever.
there's no special interest in that. They just want sites to be more accessible. And so it's like introducing people to the concept and trying to guide them through fixing and testing things and, I, it's just how it should be approached. And then have to a hands-on thing afterwards.
Not like are certain things that you just can't find without doing it manually, but it's a great... They, because they have a free version, it's a really great way for people to get introduced to that concept that I'm talking about, where you're like, gonna fix some of these things that I know what a heading is, and so I can go dive into that
[00:36:29] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah
[00:36:30] Danielle Zarcaro: it helps incrementally introduce this concept to people
[00:36:33] Nathan Wrigley: it's nice to know that WordPress does a fairly decent job. And like you say, there's a whole team of people, interviewed many of them, Joe, and Amber, and, Rhiannon, and, and Mika, and various other people who have been involved in all of that side of things. And, it may be an uphill battle for them to get the accessibility things in, but they are there.
They are blowing the trumpet and sounding the alarm when things don't, go well. And, okay, so that's really interesting. Now, I know that you've taken this a little bit further than just being like an interested party and doing this for yourself and your clients. You, you were mentioning before the, the call was recorded that you've got a course out there, and you would obviously therefore like to, to share your expertise.
Do you wanna just tell us a little bit about that? So I don't know, you might get into what the course covers, how maybe it's like halfway through being completed or prepared. maybe some URLs so that we can put those into the show notes, and a- anything else that you think is relevant. So just go for it.
Blow your own trumpet.
[00:37:39] Danielle Zarcaro: Yeah, I, Like I said, I learn by doing, and everything felt a little, fuzzy in terms of a pathway, and just stuff as you learn them. And so I wanted to create this sort of easy way for somebody to start to make a site more accessible. And so whether that's your own or you're trying it with a client site, lot of times, if you're an agency, your own site is a good place to start 'cause you can play around with things and, not have to worry about it impacting a client. And I put together an email-based course. Basically it sends you a task every Monday,
[00:38:17] Nathan Wrigley: Ha,
[00:38:17] Danielle Zarcaro: do f- 15 minutes, whatever it is, and then this way it's on Monday so you can do it on whatever day you need it to. But it's 52 weeks of, task that you can do that will, at the end of it, get you a much more accessible site.
And I don't go into anything too advanced. I try to keep it for, like, I said, baseline, let everybody be able to, do this so they're, you're not necessarily going over an accordion or a slider, but you are going over maybe a lot of the components that make up these things that hopefully you can either see maybe whether something is accessible even if you don't necessarily know how to fix it, and be able to evaluate these things before you put them on your site. little bit of, the decision-making around some of that. if you're gonna do this, is it this or this? so like just helping guide the process of doing this, but, it yourself. I have this course that I've been trying to do. I love the guy who made it.
I love the platform that he made it on. I just can't get myself to sit down and do it, and it's because you have to set aside this
[00:39:24] Nathan Wrigley: Right
[00:39:25] Danielle Zarcaro: do it, whereas if I, can just be like, "Here, do this right now for 15 minutes," and then if you wanna learn more, most of them have some kind of links at the bottom you can learn about or you can look it up yourself or you can email me.
you can respond to any of the emails and be like, "I don't understand what this means. What are you talking about?" but yeah. So I just tried to put it within a framework that would've worked for me, and that I think is a, a more hands-on approach to doing that. And, so yeah, it's... And I try to, start at a place that, like we talked about, that has a little bit of a higher impact.
your, header site logo and, But then, not just doing the header and we're diving right into, mega menus and stuff. So I was trying to, I tried to, organize it in a thoughtful way and make sure that, you're doing- taking on some of those impactful things, but not being too advanced yet and taking you through, towards the end where you're talking about, a little bit of strategy for implementing it in your marketing maybe or, widening the scope of this a little bit.
And so yeah, it's, kineticiris.com/weekly-accessibility. and it's, yeah, you just sign up. I did add the option to get them all at once 'cause I had a couple
people
[00:40:39] Nathan Wrigley: I was just about to say,
[00:40:41] Danielle Zarcaro: I
was like, yeah, so if you're the kind of person that you're like, "I just gotta, motor through it,"
[00:40:45] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah
[00:40:45] Danielle Zarcaro: tell you how to learn.
You can learn your, whatever way you learn best. if you're unsure in any way whatsoever, I would encourage the weekly, and then if at some point halfway through the year you're like, "Yeah, forget this, just send me them," you can just, me, and I'll just send
[00:40:59] Nathan Wrigley: They send you the lot. Yeah. Yeah
[00:41:01] Danielle Zarcaro: yeah, it's your thing.
If you want me to, send them to you and then, but then you also get the weekly so that you have them. what- however you basically want them is how I can provide them to you. They're all Like I said, it's an email-based course, so you can have them all at once, and I'll... But you get it as a zip.
I don't send you 360... I don't send you 52 emails at once. You get 'em to download. But yeah. But yeah, I would encourage that sort of weekly, thing, just to get in the, habit of spending a little bit of time each week. Just like anything else, try- you're trying to market more, you're trying to do things.
Any kind of small incremental changes you can make to your own, processes is gonna help you, so that's kind of the approach that I took.
[00:41:45] Nathan Wrigley: So I've been on the internet now for, forever basically, I've never heard that idea. I've never heard of that. a year-long weekly sign up once, just get a weekly task to do. Why ... what the heck? That's such a great idea.
[00:42:07] Danielle Zarcaro: way to,
[00:42:07] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, patent that.
[00:42:09] Danielle Zarcaro: that and then make everybody pay me every time they...
[00:42:11] Nathan Wrigley: But that's really great
[00:42:13] Danielle Zarcaro: came closest to it was somebody had done some sort of landing page thing, and I don't think it was a full year, but it was, like, an email thing where they would send you a, a tip each week, and that, I
[00:42:23] Nathan Wrigley: Right
[00:42:23] Danielle Zarcaro: I had saved a bunch of those to revisit, and so I think that kind of prompted a little bit of that idea. And then I talked about it in, I s- meet with a group every Thursday, and we all talk about each other's businesses. And so between that and, brainstorming, I wanna do a course and, but I d- I don't wanna do a course.
I had done a course while ago that I didn't do any m- I just kinda did it. It was, like,
[00:42:46] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, I know how this goes. Yeah.
[00:42:48] Danielle Zarcaro: if you had a site and it was taking you forever to, get it done, and then it was, like, a way to, here's how to finish it, and was a good, it was good, but it was just, it was typical, right?
You're just sitting there watching 15 to 20-minute videos, and you're like, "Okay." And then, but there's no real way to incorporate that into what you're doing. You're just like, "Yeah, okay, I'll get to that," and it just never happens. With so many things. It doesn't even have to be business-related. Any kind of, development or, it's just, it feels gap between learning that you need to do a thing or you should or you wanna do a thing and then actually doing the thing, there's, such a big, gap for so many people, myself included, to just, get started.
So I just, I don't know, it just clicked, and I
[00:43:31] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, I think that is genuinely, I think that's a really genius idea. I know the way it would work for me is that I would get them each week, and I would put them in my note-taking app and, then I would have, I don't know, I would maybe tackle, three of them in a, in one go. and then the next few would arrive, and I'd probably do the same thing.
but the fact that they're just just dropping in and it's like this helpful Monday slot where, y- you're beginning the week. You maybe got a little bit of extra time that you could map to Thursday or something like that. That's such a neat idea. Honestly, that's genius. I love that.
[00:44:09] Danielle Zarcaro: I appreciate
[00:44:09] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, that's real- That's ... Y- you wait, there's gonna be some copycats coming off the back of this. give us the URL again because you said it was ... it, you, said it, but it ... There's, a ... You've gotta spell it right, So
[00:44:23] Danielle Zarcaro: So Kinetic Iris is my agency. So kinetic the, like the
[00:44:29] Nathan Wrigley: The movement, yeah,
[00:44:31] Danielle Zarcaro: yep, and iris, like the f- the flower or the goddess,
[00:44:34] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. .
[00:44:35] Danielle Zarcaro: com. and then it's, weekly-accessibility
[00:44:40] Nathan Wrigley: so I'm gonna spell it. so it's K-I-N-E-T-I-C-I-R-I-S, so kineticiris.com/ and what was it? Weekly-accessibility.
[00:44:52] Danielle Zarcaro: Accessibility
[00:44:54] Nathan Wrigley: Okay, we're definitely putting that into the show notes. So I don't know what episode this'll turn out to be on the WP Builds podcast RSS feed. but essentially the best way to do it would be to go to wpbuilds.com, search for Danielle. I don't know that we've had another Danielle on the podcast ever, so that's probably gonna get you there.
And then you'll be able to find in the show notes towards the bottom, we'll put a link to that in case you, I don't know, you've been listening to this on the train and you've just forgotten all about it. It'll be there, for you to-
[00:45:27] Danielle Zarcaro: something that I've already, updated. I provide you with a really simplified, easy-to-use version of, an audit template that you can keep track of, changes if you don't like... Like you're saying, where if you're like, "I'll learn how to do this, and I'll just put put stuff I gotta do," and then you can go on later and complete a bunch of them at once.
And, I had updated that template, so I sent out an email to everyone to kinda be like, "Hey, some columns and made it a little easier." as I also put out more, like, maybe blog posts or content and stuff, I'll, if you want, you can always opt out, but I'll se- I'll send, "Hey, I'm adding this link to this, topic, if you've already passed that," and I can, you know that I've updated it.
[00:46:12] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.
[00:46:12] Danielle Zarcaro: the Internet's always changing, right?
So it's I just wrote something on, you know, putting lists in columns, and so that can apply to this, concept that I talked about in whatever email. And so I'm, obviously keeping it updated and stuff. And there's enough interest, I can put an advanced one out if it's something that people really find helpful.
I'd love to talk more about advanced issues and, here's what it actually takes to make these tabs
[00:46:36] Nathan Wrigley: yeah, you'll have the hundre-
[00:46:37] Danielle Zarcaro: actually test this with your keyboard and, I'm not-- I don't really go into too many of, how to test with a screen reader, do any of that.
that's a lot, just so much more complicated to... and too much demonstration
[00:46:47] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:46:49] Danielle Zarcaro: email
[00:46:49] Nathan Wrigley: Oh,
[00:46:50] Danielle Zarcaro: that's,
[00:46:51] Nathan Wrigley: it. I think that's such a great idea. But also, like from a creator's point of view, I don't know how you did it. Maybe you wrote all of 52 of them off the bat, but from a creator's point of view, so long as you're writing one a week, you're always ahead of the c- apart from the few that want the whole download, but
[00:47:07] Danielle Zarcaro: you're at least, five
[00:47:08] Nathan Wrigley: yeah, but
[00:47:09] Danielle Zarcaro: of time, so
[00:47:09] Nathan Wrigley: Like you, so long as you're ahead of that curve, because that, that for content creators when they're making their course, they o- you know how it goes. They offer the course, get a load of people to buy it, and then they've got this pressure to do it, and inevitably it ends up being longer. more topics need to be covered or they figure out the editing process is much more of a nightmare and what have you.
This is a real
[00:47:29] Danielle Zarcaro: more
[00:47:30] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, lo-fi. Nice
[00:47:32] Danielle Zarcaro: changes, I'm seeing, there's the one guy who's got the Cloudflare, course, and they'll, change their screens every two
[00:47:40] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, yeah
[00:47:42] Danielle Zarcaro: that he's, recorded is gonna look outdated or, if you're trying to teach something in WordPress and they've changed the admin area.
And so it just it helps keep it more, up to
[00:47:53] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.
[00:47:54] Danielle Zarcaro: to,
[00:47:54] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah
[00:47:54] Danielle Zarcaro: up your videos and re-edit and re-record and do all this stuff. It's a- and I saw it as a way to, Like I said, this way I'm able to put out content on something that's pertinent or, whatever, and I don't have to do it and then, somebody has to figure out how that fits into the larger picture.
I can, that for you
basically, and
[00:48:13] Nathan Wrigley: that's
[00:48:14] Danielle Zarcaro: update email and then just you're, like you said, if you're keeping track of, links you like in a document based on this course, then you can, add that link
[00:48:22] Nathan Wrigley: Right
[00:48:23] Danielle Zarcaro: It's just, it gives somebody more flexibility to learn how they
[00:48:26] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. And you get it in an email, so you don't have to have a membership for anything. You just get an email. okay. I think we'll knock it on the head there, as we say in the UK. So go and check it out. Danielle, go and search for that on wpbuilds.com. The search icon's top right usually.
And, and you'll be able to find that out. That's really interesting. So first of all, thank you for, telling us all about your journey with accessibility and al- accessibility, he said, unable to say it. But also thank you for that, holy grail of interest at the end there about how to... I'm gonna go and do that now.
I'm gonna... I'm not, by the way, but I think that's a genius idea. I have thoughts. I'll tell you them in a moment after we've hit stop. But,
[00:49:10] Danielle Zarcaro: and it's something that I'd love to, if there's an agency that's interested and wants to, I think it, could really be helpful, if you have some people that you're hiring, that are really great, and then you also wanna make sure they have this accessibility baseline.
it could just be part of their onboarding,
[00:49:26] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, yeah, you could sign them up for it. Right
[00:49:30] Danielle Zarcaro: maybe give them a task a day or something so that you don't have to wait a whole year for them to be up to speed. But if there's some way that you wanna organize it to be able to, give everybody that baseline.
I just, I want as many people to be doing things accessibly because it's second nature to
[00:49:44] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:49:45] Danielle Zarcaro: because they feel like it's a
task that they
[00:49:46] Nathan Wrigley: I can feel the next course coming on. So it's gonna be, kineticarist.com/daily
[00:49:53] Danielle Zarcaro: Perfect.
[00:49:55] Nathan Wrigley: /accessibility365. Emails will be coming your way. Okay, Danielle, thank you so much for chatting to me today. That was great. Yeah, you're welcome.
Okay, that's all we've got time for today. I hope that you enjoyed that. If you did, head to wpbuilds.com. Search for episode 4 8 3, 483. Leave us a comment there.
Just a quick reminder, if you would, and I urge you to be involved in the new podcast app that I'm launching. It is very, very, very, very like days away close. Head to nathanwrigley.com/app. Fill out the form there, and we'll let you know when it is finally launched, and you'll get some seriously aggressive pricing so that you can help us build the thing, and refine it and shape it a little bit towards the beginning. It's a bit like a Kickstarter, isn't it? It feels like that, anyway. So there we go.
I hope that you enjoyed that. I'm gonna fade in some cheesy music and say stay safe. You have a good week. Bye-bye for now.
