Brussels / 3 & 4 February 2024

schedule

Web Accessibility and Environmental Sustainability and with Popular CMS


Web Accessibility has a lot of complexities, and most CMS do not have the capacity to invest in it sufficiently. Two years ago Funka organized a Cross-CMS initiative to look at supporting content authors in their efforts to produce accessible content. This EC funded initiative, the We4Authors Cluster brought together Drupal, Joomla, Plone, and Umbreco. This is the only cross-CMS accessibility event I am aware of where maintainers collaborated on common UI elements. It is also the only one I am aware of where user research was done on authors, to help evaluate accessibility. We need more of this.

Currently, Environmental Sustainability in the CMS space is given even less of a priority than accessibility. We are in a climate crisis, digital tools are contributing to it, global best practices are emerging, but adoption of these best practices isn't happening fast enough. Collaboration is needed to both raise awareness within our industry, but also find common solutions. Finding common approaches to measure the CO2 impact is an important starting point. Much more will be needed if we are to help the web make significant reductions in energy consumption.

These are two places where collaboration is key if we are able to make the advances which are needed for people with disabilities, as well as future generations. Where can we help to optimize our development process, code execution, and the cumulative impact of CO2 produced through the process.

Speakers

Photo of Mike Gifford Mike Gifford

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