Episode 114: Joe LoPreste

Introducing Joe LoPreste

Joe says he’s very passionate about inclusive design for WordPress and considers himself a web accessibility advocate. He travels around the US giving presentations to WordPress developers, designers, and agencies about web accessibility.

Show Notes

Website | St. Pete Design

Twitter | @JosephLoPreste

Preferred Pronouns | He/Him

Episode Transcript

Tara: This is Hallway Chats, where we meet people who use WordPress.

Liam: We ask questions and our guests share their stories, ideas, and perspectives.

Tara: And now the conversation begins. This is Episode 114.

Tara: Welcome to Hallway Chats. I’m Tara Claeys.

Liam: And I’m Liam Dempsey. Today, we’re joined by Joe LoPreste. Joe says he’s very passionate about inclusive design for WordPress and considers himself a web accessibility advocate. He travels around the US giving presentations to WordPress developers, designers, and agencies about web accessibility. Welcome, Joe.

Joe: Hello, how are you?

Tara: Hi, Joe. Welcome to Hallway Chats. Thanks for joining us today. Can you talk a little bit more about yourself?

Joe: Sure. I’m from Florida. I have two daughters, 18 and 15. I’ve been dealing with WordPress for a few years now. Like you said, I like to consider myself accessibility advocate. Well, we’ll see you. I guess only time will tell.

Tara: How did you get involved in that? How did you get started in a very hot topic, the past, I don’t know, a couple of years especially? But I know before that, too, but especially it seems to be growing. So tell us a little bit about how you got involved in accessibility specifically?

Joe: Sure. Well, me and my lifelong friends started a web development company about five years ago, and we just specialized in WordPress. Shortly after we started that, we got a call from a local government agency that was asking about Web accessibility, and if we could do it. I guess every good developer would, in the beginning, we took the job. We started our research phase of that, and that’s really when it grabbed hold of me.

I just saw the individuals that needed the help, I saw the ability to help, and I saw the lacking of help. Not that people aren’t out there helping but I just really saw like I could help. And it’s just kind of grown from there. The more I learn about it, the more enamored I get with it. That’s really about it. It’s just grown from there

Tara: And it’s not just specific to WordPress what you’re doing. I assume that you’re working on accessibility beyond just that platform.

Joe: Yes. We work on pretty much all CMS’s. It’s not really WordPress specific, but that is where I did get the start. I’m much better at the WordPress aspect of accessibility but we do all of them.

Tara: I have a confession that when I test sites, and I use some of the browser tools for accessibility, it always frustrates me because it seems like a nearly impossible task to check all of the boxes. How accurate is that? How deep do you go with that? I know that certain organizations need to have higher levels and others, they have requirements to meet legally. How do you approach that? Do you check all those boxes?

Joe: Oh, yeah, definitely. We have to. As far as accuracy goes, the automated tools are not very accurate. There’s lots of false positives. Lots of, I won’t say false negatives, but they don’t show a lot of the stuff. Really, in my opinion, the automated testing tools are meant to just kind of get the low hanging fruit that really should have been caught in development before it was launched.