We are all WordPress

I learned something today. WordPress isn’t really a web development platform or content management system.

It’s a community.

People at the WordPress booth at South by SouthwestToday I had the great honor of representing WordPress Austin at the WordPress booth at South By Southwest Interactive, and I played the part of “WordPress Genius,” explaining what WordPress is, hearing how people use it, describing to them how it can help their business, and offering technical and other advice.

Some people who stopped by the booth weren’t very familiar with WordPress, so I explained that it’s free, it’s open source, it’s easy to use, and it allows people to build anything from a small personal blog to a giant news site like CNN. And in response, a number of them didn’t understand how WordPress can be a free product. They asked about the “enterprise level” (there isn’t one) or “what’s the catch?” (again, there isn’t one).

I suppose in this day and age it’s hard to imagine a product that is so powerful, and so widely used, but has so few strings attached. It’s something anyone can use however they want (and even modify!). And therein lies its power. Because it’s so easy to use, and free, it creates tremendous passion among its users.

But it’s more than just a product as well.

By working at the booth, I discovered that the people at Automattic (the company behind WordPress.com that employs some of the most active WordPress contributors) really do want to hear from the community. Case in point: Jane Wells took to heart my comments about WordPress and accessibility. She said they worked hard to make the default theme Twenty Ten accessible, and are aware of, and have plans to fix, the accessibility issues in the WordPress backend/admin panel. She encouraged me or anyone else to submit patches to address any problems.

I also met Ian Stewart, the lead developer for Twenty Ten, a great theme to use as a starting place when developing custom themes that meet accessibility standards, because it has solid, clean, semantic code. Ironically, I mentioned my previous post about his Thematic theme and how it was difficult to modify for accessibility; he immediately pulled out a business card and had me promise to email him after the conference with my comments.

What this says is that WordPress cares about accessibility, but even more, they care about their users.

And that reinforces is a feeling I’ve had for some time: WordPress isn’t just code, or a product, or a CMS – it’s not just a thing. It’s a community.

It’s a group of people that includes people who work for Automattic; freelancers; open source contributors; third-party hosting and service providers; plugin and theme developers; meetup groups and WordCamps; and most of all, the users themselves.

We all use it, we love it, and we want to learn it, teach others, and help WordPress become even better.

In other words, we are all WordPress.

Accessibility updates for WordPress?

Yesterday a little bird directed me to a conversation about accessibility on the WordPress Development Updates blog.

For those unfamiliar with “WPDevel”, it’s the blog for and by people on the WordPress core development team. It’s a good place to sneak a peek at what the devs are working on and what they consider important in the ongoing development of WordPress itself.

The main blog post, by WordPress core developer/usability expert Jane Wells, focuses on what will be considered part of the scope for WordPress 3.1 (remember, the most recent version to date is 3.0.1). However, if you scroll down, in the comments section of the blog is a discussion about accessibility updates.

As Rich Pedley notes, there are close ties between the WordPress dev team and GAWDs, the Guild of Accessible Web Designers. With this in mind, he raises the question about what accessibility features will be incorporated into the next version, which sparked a bit of discussion.

I should note that I’m a million miles away from being part of any discussion on WordPress development, but the conversation got me really excited. WordPress already incorporates some accessibility elements into the core design and default theme, and it’s arguably easier to add in additional accessibility elements in WordPress than in some other platforms. Even so, it’s nice to see accessibility continuing to be discussed at the top levels.

In particular, I was gratified to see Jane’s comment:

Accessibility patches will be reviewed and added anytime someone submits them (assuming they are up to par, of course). The problem is that very few people choose to submit accessibility patches. Accessibility patches welcome.

It sounds like there’s the will to make Twenty Ten (the default theme) and the admin sections even more accessible, which is awesome in and of itself, but it also sounds like they’re reaching outo the broader WordPress community for assistance.

More than anything, this debate offers a great opportunity for people who care about WordPress and accessibility. If they hear from WordPress users that accessibility is important to us, we might just see more features built into the core.

And that’s a good thing for everyone.

UPDATE: Since I wrote this post yesterday, there has been additional discussion on the wp-accessibility mailing list about modifying the Twenty Ten theme as well as creating an admin/dashboard area that incorporates more accessible features such as a different color scheme. Rich Pedley has already identified some areas that can be improved in the theme. I’m looking forward to seeing where these discussions go.

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