Dan Knauss

I’ve been around WordPress long enough to see how often accessibility gets treated like a checkbox: a last-minute task squeezed in before launch. Or worse, an optional feature, to address only if there’s budget left over.

I think both approaches miss the point completely.

Accessibility isn’t an edge case. It’s the baseline for building things that work for everyone.

Especially in Canada.

In this country we have a deep commitment to inclusion — not just as policy, but as a cultural value. From coast to coast, we’re proud of our diversity and our social responsibility. We recognize that public goods, like the web, need to begin and end with everyone in mind.

Everyone.

Including people with disabilities. People with different learning needs. People at every age, and people using assistive tech. All of those folks, those people, are a vital part of every user base.

When we treat accessibility as a core value instead of an afterthought, something amazing happens: our work gets better for everyone.

Navigation gets clearer. Content is easier to understand. Interactions get more consistent— and easier for all of us to use. And above all, we build trust. Because we’ve shown we’re thinking way past what’s convenient and far beyond what’s trendy.

Real Innovation Starts with Inclusion

It’s easy to chase the latest flashy design trend (especially if someone’s already coded it up in a cool new JavaScript framework!) But real innovation in the WordPress space — and on the open web — starts with solving real problems for real people. That means building tools and experiences that are usable and equitable first. Then you can worry about what’s impressive in a portfolio.

When we lead with accessibility, we are not limiting creativity. We’re expanding it. We’re building smarter, more sustainable codebases—and systems that adapt and scale. We’re writing better documentation—and sending a clear message: you belong here.

Canada’s Role in the Global Web

As Canadians, we have a real opportunity to model accessibility-first thinking on the global stage: our government has made accessibility the law. Our developers and designers build WCAG and usability into everything they do. And our WordPress community is full of people who care deeply about equity, inclusion, and doing the right thing — even when no one’s watching.

We’ve already seen this in action at WordCamps across the country. Talks that make the case for accessible design. Workshops that teach inclusive development. Communities that make sure events welcome everyone.

We don’t just have the knowledge — we have the will.

Accessibility at Carleton

Carleton University is an especially great Canadian example of leadership in accessibility. WordCamp Ottawa has convened at Carleton in the past, but it will be my first time there in October. When we landed on Carleton as our venue, I started to research it so I could start describing the amenities to prospective sponsors, speakers, and attendees.

Accessibility came up a lot!

All of Carleton University’s 45 buildings are wheelchair accessible over ground. Richcraft Hall’s theatre and classrooms have accessible door buttons, adjustable height podiums, assistive listening devices, and flexible seating.

There’s accessible parking. There’s a para transpo system that connects with all of Ottawa and the 211 system. There’s a tunnel and skyway network connecting all campus buildings. There’s support for service animals.

The Accessibility Commons brings together all of Carleton’s numerous, multifaceted accessibility services, programs, systems, and resources.

Unsurprisingly, Carleton’s Accessibility Institute is the national headquarters of the Canadian Accessibility Network and has a unique, multidiciplinary, post-graduate Collaborative Specialization in Accessibility program.

Everyone Benefits from Accessible Spaces

As Cathy noted in a previous post, everyone will deal with disability in some form at some point in their lives. If you’re over 50, like me, odds are you also struggle reading small print especially in low light. For others, it’s worse or maybe it’s hearing loss.

For me, it’s a lifelong, progressive, neuromuscular disease that (combined with age and injuries) limits my mobility more and more.

I don’t have huge needs, but I notice the significant barriers and limitations more when I’m in very inaccessible spaces that are hard to navigate on foot, require a lot of walking — or worse, climbing or prolonged standing in place.

At WordCamps I’m on my feet more than usual, and I usually just accept the discomfort, which is easier when I’m having fun. But I don’t look forward to the flights and airports.

I am looking forward to exploring the Carleton campus, coming from the airport and going downtown on the O-train, and spending time in and around Richcraft Hall.

Let’s Keep Leading

If you’re part of the WordPress community — whether as a builder, a contributor, or a content creator — I challenge you to stop thinking about accessibility as an enhancement. See it as a foundation.

It’s not about compliance. It’s care.

Let’s make accessibility something we’re known for — not just in Canada, but across the WordPress ecosystem.

Let’s lead with values. With empathy. And build the web we all deserve.

Get your tickets, bring your curiosity, and join us in Ottawa this fall for an unforgettable celebration of WordPress, community, and the open web! 🌐

🎟️ Tickets are on sale now, and we’ve secured discount rates for you at area hotels. 🏨

Last year I restarted the Edmonton WordPress Meetup after a long period of inactivity. I had moved to Edmonton about the time the local WordPress and tech community was suffering some setbacks that would soon be followed by the global pandemic. Where there was once a vibrant meetup and startup scene that supported several WordCamps, there was just a gap waiting for people to fill. So we did, just like other local WordPress meetups across Canada.

Find your local WordPress community

If you haven’t connected with the WordPress community in your neck of the woods, please do!

• Matt Graham set up this fine wayfinding site to help you find a meetup near you.
• Marcus Burnette created thewp.world to connect everybody, and he adds some new features just about every month. Currently you can search for other members in the directory within a certain distance of selected town or city. Here’s everyone 500km from Ottawa.

This week, Marcus also kindly emailed all resident Canadians in the directory to remind them to get their tickets for WCEH! 😊 There are no borders in the WordPress community, however. Just being in the Great Lakes region again this year makes WCEH both a regional and international destination. This is true anywhere in Canada, certainly along our border with the United States. As always, we are welcoming attendees and speakers from the US and all over the world.

Connect with a local university

In WordPress, more than most open source communities, we’ve always believed that open exploration is the heart of learning and growth. Whether you’re a student curious about the web, a seasoned developer, a solo creator, or someone running an agency—WordPress gives all of us a common ground to experiment, create, and push boundaries.

Students are special, however! It’s been my privilege to help connect students from NAIT and the University of Alberta with each other and the WordPress ecosystem through the Edmonton Meetup.

WCEH is taking place this Fall on the Carleton University campus with a “Back to campus” theme centred on learning, exploration, innovation, and community. Meanwhile, the WordPress Campus Connect program has been growing. Interested students and faculty should check it out, consider starting a campus club, connecting with a local meetup, or taking advantage of the new WordPress Credits internship program.

Introducing WordPress Credits: A New Contribution Internship Program for University Students

Meetups make learning social

Exploration isn’t just about shiny new tools (though we love those too); it’s about asking better questions, trying new approaches, and discovering how technology can meet human needs. From the Site Editor and block themes to open web ethics and inclusive design, there’s always something new to unpack—both technically and socially.

That’s where the meetup comes in.

WordPress meetups bring people of all ages together from all walks of life to share their knowledge, test ideas, and learn from each other. We explore how WordPress empowers individuals and communities, and how it intersects with broader topics like digital literacy, privacy, accessibility, and the open source ethos.

It’s one thing to tinker in isolation. It’s another to explore together. When we connect, ideas move faster. Confidence grows. Projects come to life. That’s the real power of exploration — turning ideas into action through community.

Find your people to explore web tech with together

Exploration is where innovation begins. It’s the moment we stop asking “what if?” and start doing. In the world of WordPress, exploration isn’t just curiosity—it’s a superpower that turns ideas into action.

Whether you’re a seasoned developer or just getting started, pushing boundaries is where the magic happens. Trying a new block theme, diving into custom post types, or integrating APIs can take your site from standard to standout. The WordPress ecosystem is vast, and the tools are always evolving — exploring them opens new creative possibilities.

New features like the Site Editor, patterns, and headless WordPress options are transforming what’s possible. By stepping outside the familiar and experimenting with these tools, we unlock better workflows, cleaner designs, and more dynamic experiences for users.

Don’t wait for the “perfect plan” — exploration thrives in action. Sketch the idea, test the plugin, build the block. WordPress is built for creators, tinkerers, and trailblazers. The only limit is how far you’re willing to explore.

Curious? Come to a meetup. Bring your questions, your half-finished ideas, your goals. You’ll find a welcoming space to learn, share, and build — together.

Like a lot of us, New_ Public wants to reimagine social media. If you subscribe to their Substack, you may be asked a few simple but deep questions. I like this — if you take it seriously, it slows you down to engage through our oldest digital social network, email.

Here are the questions and my answers:

What is your favourite public space: Sidewalk Cafés or in the median, Montréal style. Also, public plazas and squares, like the way Churchill Square/City Hall Plaza in Edmonton were before the pandemic. 

Why it matters: These are neutral spaces where anyone can do anything, but they are also social spaces, so people expect to interact socially with strangers and friends. At least if they are healthy! When they become unhealthy, these spaces are fearful and policed. They can no longer function as the peoples’ place and be granted an unsupervised autonomy — they pass from zones of implicit trust to zones of suspicion. Any street or alley is subject to the same dynamics. 

Can aspects of this space be translated into digital spaces? Yes, it can be done in real-time digital communication spaces like Zoom and possibly chat groups, but the relative anonymity of chat always keeps you guessing. Videoconferencing with people speaking and seeming to be more physically present supports the same kind of tenuous social trust that strangers can develop in chance encounters in public spaces. If this is supported by the much more established asynchronous connector of letters, emails, and other “long form writing” over time, I believe this brings out the best in people, in terms of trust, deepening relationships, shared thinking, and creativity. 

What do you think?

Can your favourite public space be translated to digital media? Are there any strong analogies between physical and digital social spaces?

A majority of people today might say blog comments or any type of commenting online is a terrible idea — the digital equivalent of a dive bar where there’s always a fight rather than your friendly neighbourhood sidewalk cafe.

But then again, many of us use forms of commenting and direct messaging for team communications and project management every day. They can have their drawbacks too, but open conflict is not a common complaint and would point to problems within a team or company culture.

Dave Winer thinks comments are almost universally a bad idea, and if you want to communicate with others online, you should do it with your own (federated?) blog. That’s pretty much how we discussed the topic on our respective blogs, X, and Mastodon accounts. 😊

I was reading @spolsky on learning from @davewiner — https://t.co/Qp3xle3GZO — it's a short blog post against unmoderated comments appended to blog posts. Can comments be done well? Should they be saved or disabled by default? Share your *comments* below.

— WordCamp Canada (@WordCampCanada) July 16, 2025

I am more hopeful for well-tended digital commons. Public discourse online and in person works when an informal, unwritten etiquette is followed, but it has to be nurtured and protected. The more open and public the forum is, the more important it is to have onboarding and passive feedback mechanisms to protect the commons of “free” public speech. Blog comments on by default with no other efforts made to craft a healthy communication space are a bad idea — I agree with that.

What’s your favourite digital equivalent of a chatty sidewalk cafe? Do you have one?

I’m publishing this post on the WordCamp Canada site and the Edmonton WordPress Meetup site (WPYEG.org) via WordLand (wordland.social). WPYEG.org is federated with ActivityPub, so people following it on platforms like Mastodon will see this post too. (For example, edmontonian.social, mstdn.ca, ottawa.place, and wptoots.social.)

WordLand is the work of Dave Winer. Dave is our first announced WCEH speaker, the inventor of RSS, and a visionary for the web we hoped we’d get — and still believe we can create. 

Dave has blogged a lot about WordLand for several years — well before it had a name, as I recall. I remember him indirectly revealing the motivation behind WordLand (and also ActivityPub) last year in a post titled Why we’re lucky WordPress is here and other topics:

WordPress is, among other things, a perfect time capsule of open technologies from the early days of innovation on the web, and widely deployed and able to deliver all their benefits, if we widen our view of social media to be a social web, and simply create places where posts with and without titles are equally supported. It’s that simple. Without WordPress we would have to build all that, and wait for it to deploy in numbers, to matter in the market. All we have to do now is make the connections. #

That stuck with me. 

We do need to make the connections, now more than ever. 

Here’s Dave’s “big vision” for WordLand, a more technical “how-to” dive into it, and his thoughts about why it makes sense to bring this to WordCamp Canada.

What do you think?

*Canadians may recognize my title riffs on John Ralston Saul‘s brilliant 2017 essay “The Bridges Canada Must Build, Right Here at Home.” I used to have my students read and respond to it at MacEwan University. It’s relevant, on other levels, to the kind of web we want and our conference themes. You should read it if you haven’t. Thanks to the Wayback Machine you can.

Update: Dave recorded his thoughts and published a small account of the history of WordLand’s (and his own) relationship with WordPress.