Within the last couple of months, I was updating plugins for one of my employer’s WordPress sites. The accessibility plugin that I had been using and that had been an incredibly popular plugin had been called One Click Accessibility. There was a major version update from 2.x to 3 and when I installed it, I was met with a wildly different plugin. Long story short, the plugin was sold to Elementor and then went commercial.
This really, really pissed me off. I could have just stayed on version 2 of the plugin perpetually but so many other people got screwed as well. There are many other accessibility plugins available in the WordPress plugin repository but I decided to make my own out of spite.
Accessibility platforms like UserWay and Accessibe are prevalent and big business but while they will give you a widget or something to add to your site to assist those who need with things like text size, color contrast and the like, what they are selling is a “cover your ass” service in the even that you get sued. They aren’t marketing a product to help people, they are selling fear and then a handy peace of mind solution to those who think they need it.
I don’t know, I have a fundamental problem with making money directly or indirectly from people who have a disability or who are differently-abled. The argument can be made that commercial accessibility offerings aren’t protecting site owners from people with disabilities but rather the trolls that will sue anyone for anything and then offer a settlement to make a quick, shitty buck. Those people exist and they suck but site owners that genuinely give a shit about their users should have options a-plenty.
The project was always intended to be open source and while it can’t provide any type of legal services, it can at least help make the best effort possible to accommodate all type of different use cases for people with different needs.
You can find my official plugin here. This project is (and will always be) open source and my GitHub repo can be forked if you want to make it your own. I plan to actively work on this and incorporate feedback as well as new features so please let me know what you think and what you might want to see!
By the way, I am using the plugin on this site so you can take it for a test drive and see if you think it could work for you and your sites.