To mark Global Accessibility Awareness Day on May 15, Equalize Digital is inviting the WordPress community to take part in a virtual contributor day and spend a few hours helping to make the web more accessible. Whether it’s fixing heading levels, testing keyboard navigation, or improving a plugin or theme, the goal is simple: learn by doing and make a difference.

Amber Hinds, CEO of Equalize Digital, says the idea came from a desire to create a more hands-on experience this year. In previous years, the accessibility-focused agency has hosted GAAD panel discussions and showcases. This time, she said, they wanted to create space for direct action.

“We thought it would be a good way for people to learn about accessibility while doing accessibility work, and also positively impacting the web by fixing real problems,” Hinds said.

So far, 38 people have pledged 166 hours. Hinds hopes to see that number grow to 100 participants by May 15 and is especially encouraging people who don’t typically work on accessibility to get involved.

“We talk a lot about accessibility being everyone’s job,” she said. “My hope is that by encouraging people to focus solely on accessibility for a day, it will get them thinking about ways that they can better integrate accessibility into their day-to-day work.”

Hinds pointed to the 132 open accessibility tickets in Trac and 493 in Gutenberg, noting that fewer than 10 people are actively working on patches.

“One of the biggest challenges for accessibility in WordPress is the number of people on the team available to submit and test patches,” she said. “WordPress 6.8 had over 900 contributors. Imagine what a dent could be made in the 625 known issues if even one-third of those people decided to focus on accessibility for a day or more. It would be great to see a bug-fix release come out of this day where many accessibility issues are resolved.”

Theme and plugin developers are also being encouraged to audit and improve their products. Hinds says accessibility often gets deprioritized in favor of new features, but those decisions scale across tens or even hundreds of thousands of sites. “The biggest contributor to accessibility problems on WordPress websites are themes and plugins,” she said. “If whole teams from these companies focused on accessibility for a day, that could also have a meaningful impact on the web.”

Hinds said some meaningful ways people could contribute to accessibility, even if they’re new to it, include: testing Gutenberg issues that need accessibility feedback, looking at “good first bugs” in Trac, captioning videos on WordPress.tv, or using the free Accessibility Checker plugin to scan their own website and fix common issues like missing alt text, empty links, or ambiguous anchor text.

Anyone can get involved by pledging time at equalizedigital.com/gaad2025. Hinds hopes this first-time event will spark not only a day of focused contributions, but longer-term involvement in accessibility efforts across the WordPress ecosystem.

“I would love to see more people putting accessibility first in their own work and also more people thinking about contributing to the WordPress Accessibility team on an ongoing basis,” she said.