For many years, I didn’t know much about accessibility. It felt like a new list of things I had to pay attention to, and I didn’t have the mental space for it. My journey with accessibility began after a conversation with a friend about new ways to niche my services—and after listening to an inspiring talk by a blind speaker. As I explored the topic further, I truly empathised with the needs of people who rely on accessible websites. I also started to realise that I, too, needed one—because of vision issues that come with age.
The first step in learning accessibility was confusing: so many terms, rules, and principles, but no real-life examples. Where to start? How to learn? How is an accessible website different from a non-accessible website? The field seemed so complex, and there was no clear path to learn about it. That’s one reason why many creative people avoid learning accessibility.
I attended WCEU in Turin, met professionals, and joined all the accessibility events there. The path became a bit clearer.
To build both knowledge and hands-on experience, I combined online learning with real-world practice through the following courses, activities and projects:
- A11Collective – Web Accessibility, the basics – this 2-hour course provides the main concept of web accessibility and testing;
- WP Accessibility (LinkedIn) by Joe Dolson—This two-hour course helped familiarize me with accessibility in the WordPress ecosystem. My takeaways were the bookmarklets and the practical workshop on testing a menu;
- Accessibility Foundation, by Collen Gratzer – helped me to clarify practical things for building an accessible website following the main elements of the website;
- How To Design for Accessibility: for UX Designers (WCAG 2.2) – UDEMY course by Liz Brown
- The courses provided by Knowbility, as part of AIR 2024;
- Piccia Neri’s Design MasterClass Get it Seen (here is my review);
- Studies the book Web Accessibility Cookbook by Manuel Matuzovic;
- I joined IAPP and prepared for the CPACC exam and had the exam in February 2025 (waiting for the results);
- I had a few mentorship sessions with Anne Bovelett;
- I attended the WP Accessibility Meetup and the Office Hours organized by Equalize Digital.
- I was part of AIR (Accessibility International Rally) 2024 and built DanceWaterloo.org with the team;
- gave a talk called How to Start Building Accessible Websites at the WordPress Bucharest Meetup (Jan 2025);
- I created a new brand, Creatibility, for white-label web development services.
- I was part of Accessible Infographics at the Cloudfest Hackathon 2025.
- I passed the CPACC test – I wrote an article about the exam – I received the confirmation message on March 31st!
Where am I after one year? The confusion is gone, and accessibility has become a new mindset. I am confident about how to design and develop simple brochure websites, and work on more complex ones as a developer. Some things are actually simple when you have a good foundation. And for the things I’m not sure about, I now know where to look.
When it came to projects, I implemented the core principle to all websites I’ve built over the last year. Accessibility is not a separate asset, to use it to avoid penalties. Accessibility is a new mindset you can’t put aside when building all types of websites!
