WP Engine is a Platinum sponsor of WordPress Accessibility Day 2022 and an enthusiastic supporter of the WordPress community and accessibility. In addition to sponsoring WordPress Accessibility Day, WP Engine is also a live caption sponsor of the WordPress Accessibility Meetup.
About WP Engine
WP Engine is a WordPress technology company that provides relied-upon and trusted brands and developer-centric WordPress products for companies and agencies of all sizes. Their hosting products include managed WordPress hosting, enterprise WordPress, and headless WordPress, offered through two hosting brands, WP Engine and Flywheel.
In addition to their managed WordPress offerings, WP Engine also has many tools that help developers and agencies build WordPress websites. These tools include the Genesis theme framework, Local, an app for local WordPress development, and the Advanced Custom Fields plugin, among others.
WP Engine’s tech innovation and award-winning WordPress experts help to power more than 1.5 million sites across 150 countries.
Accessible Hosting Panel
Accessibility on the web goes beyond accessibility on front-end websites. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) apply to all content on the web – from website content to PDFs, social media, and, yes, the apps and tools that power the backend of any website as well. For hosting companies,that means that their hosting dashboards should be accessible too.
WP Engine recently did a major overhaul of its hosting panel and improving accessibility was a large focus of that work. When we gave their hosting dashboard a test drive, we took note that:
- Everything can be reached and used with a keyboard alone.
- There is an obvious focus indicator.
- Any tooltips that are visible on hover are also visible on focus.
- Fields and buttons are appropriately labeled.
- Alerts and other messages are read out by screen readers.
🙌 Way to go, WP Engine! These features, among others, make WP Engine a top option if you’re looking for a managed WordPress host with an accessible dashboard. Next time you’re in your hosting dashboard for WP Engine, try using the keyboard alone to navigate – you’re guaranteed to be impressed!
Introducing Accessibility to Existing Designs
Introducing accessibility into existing designs like WP Engine did with their hosting dashboard can be tricky, even more so when you work within the confines of an existing design system and brand. Want to know more about how WP Engine approached making their hosting panel more accessible and establishing a framework for accessible designs at WP Engine moving forward?
Tune in for Katie Gleason’s WordPress Accessibility Day talk, Introducing Accessibility to Existing Designs. This lighting talk, held in November 2, 2022 at 22:00 UTC, will be a great overview of WP Engine’s internal design process for accessibility.
More Accessibility Resources from WP Engine
If you’re just getting started with accessibility or want to dive in deeper, WP Engine has great resources in its resource library. We recommend checking out these articles as a good place to start:
- What Is Website Accessibility? (4 Tips for ADA Compliance)
- Web Accessibility and WordPress: What, why and how (on-demand webinar)
- Accessibility + WordPress eBook
- On-Demand Webinar – Accessibility: The journey
Thanks again to WP Engine for being a great advocate for accessibility, not just through their support of WordPress Accessibility Day and WordPress Accessibility Meetup, but also by creating helpful content around accessibility and prioritizing accessibility in their own hosting panel.