Issue #157 Loop WP

Accessibility is a Human Right

Author

Simon Harper
May 14, 2025

In partnership with

Hi, friend. 👋

Welcome to Issue #157 of Loop WP!

Last week, we discussed Community building with WordPress and looked at Fluent Community.

This week is a bit “different” as we discuss this newsletter, Accessibility, and I have a quick follow-up to Fluent Community in the shape of BuddyPress.

Let’s go! 👇

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A Bit Different

Remkus de Vries kindly said the following about this newsletter. 🥳

❝

I enjoy reading is Simon Harper‘s Loop WP. It’s different, and he also offers great insight into random WordPress related things.

Remkus De Vries

It’s been a while since I did something completely different:

🚨 And this week, I want to talk briefly about Accessibility, especially as tomorrow (May 15th) is Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD). 👇

Accessibility

💡 I talk about Accessibility regularly in both newsletters (I also run All About Email), and the last time we discussed it in Loop WP was Issue 129, and I encourage you friend to read it as I discuss:

  • The European Accessibility Act 2025 - effective June 28, 2025. ⚠️

  • WordPress Accessibility Day - currently calling for 2025 organisers.

  • Accessibility plugins for WordPress to help with compliance. **

** I had been using the free version of the Accessibility Checker plugin on my site (it’s brilliant), but last year, I upgraded to the Pro Version as the team is offering 25% off to celebrate GAAD with coupon code GAAD25.

Accessibility Is A Human Right

🚨 Accessibility is not just about compliance; accessibility is a human right.

Accessibility is not about one day of the year; everyone benefits from more accessible websites.

📢 There are lots of amazing people in the WordPress community to follow if you want to keep up with accessibility, and this is not an exclusive list:

Before You Go

Remkus de Vries (a person I admire in the WordPress community) kindly emailed me about last week’s newsletter and how much he enjoyed it.

Remkus also included me in his most recent newsletter (thank you) and asked this question: “Curious why BuddyPress wasn’t even on the list of considerations, tho 🤔”.

It’s a great question, and BuddyPress has been around for a long time.

Despite being known in the past for performance issues, it has been overcoming those over the last few years.

However, I didn’t consider BuddyPress because:

  • Partly due to its performance history (if I’m being honest).

  • With everything going on at Automattic, I don’t know how much investment is being made into the plugin.

  • The last major update of significance was 18 months ago. **

  • It hasn’t kept up with features and modern design in other community plugins and platforms.

  • The documentation is all over the place, with frequent 404s and disorganisation (but I know they are working on improving this).

  • Whilst not technically a BuddyPress issue, I’m also not a fan of the Block Editor (although it does continue to improve).

** There was another major update last year but didn’t add significant features comparable to other platforms. There are also plans for much bigger changes in v15.0.

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That’s It For This Week 👋

⏭️ I’m going to be experimenting a little bit with the format of this newsletter over the coming weeks, and your feedback would be greatly appreciated, friend.

See you next week! 😀

Weekly WordPress News & Tips

This week's excellent and insightful WordPress News & Tips:

  • Portland Bound - WordCamp US 2025 Moves Ahead With New Leads After Automattic Layoffs Disrupt Planning. (The Repository)

  • Figma Sites - It’s worse than you thought. (Kevin Powell)

  • Google Tag Manager - First-party tags in seconds: Cloudflare integrates Google tag gateway for advertisers. (Cloudflare)

  • AI Profile Builder - Build Your AI Identity with Gravatar’s New Tool. (Gravatar)

  • Up to 95% Reductions! - WooCommerce 9.9 will deliver massive admin performance gains. (WooCommerce)

  • Accessibility Pledge - Join 71 people pledging 324 hours to improve accessibility in WordPress. (Equalize Digital)

  • Performance - Stop Obsessing Over Image Optimization. (Remkus de Vries)

  • The What?? - Ending the WordPress Media Corps Experiment. (WordPress)

  • Relume - Build & Prototype WordPress Websites FAST with This Process. (WPTuts)

  • At the Core - Interview with Birgit Pauli-Haack, Fabian Kaegy and Nathan Wrigley. (WP Builds)

  • Wow!! - A single markdown file (6.5MB) with all of WordPress developer handbooks, which you can add to your project for AI context. (Kaspars Dambis)

  • New Launch! - Introducing Modular DS 2.0. (Modular DS)

  • Customers “Not Harmed” - Automattic Asks Court to Dismiss Class Action Filed by WP Engine Customer. (The Repository)

If you have a question about this email or WordPress, reply, and I will answer you as soon as possible.

👋 Until next time,

Simon Harper's handwritten signature