In this interview, Elena Brescacin shares her journey with WordPress, which began between 2003 and 2004 when she explored the platform as an accessible alternative for building websites as a blind creator. She discusses her initial contributions to open-source projects, such as translations and feedback on plugins, and highlights her ongoing work, including a personal blog about HIV stigma, PlusBrothers.net. Elena provides insightful commentary on the current state of WordPress, stressing the need for improvements in accessibility, privacy, and security.
Can you share your first experience with WordPress, and what made you choose it?
First WordPress experience came between 2003 and 2004, WordPress was just at the beginning; initially I was curious about blogs because they were a possibility to focus more on content than on code. I tried my first WordPress on a small site about audio-editing (no longer available) where I shared my own experiences with softwares to manipulate audio and electronic voices. WordPress was the right compromise then, as a blind web site creator, because I had less to worry about layout and repeated contents (menus for example) and I had not to deal with the barriers of inaccessible WYSIWYG editors such as FrontPage or DreamWeaver, at that time. Or editing the whole site by hand. What I needed was just to edit HTML on single posts and pages where the visual editor did not cover accessibility completely.
How did you start contributing to open-source projects, and what was your first contribution to the WordPress community?
Open Source contribution started with some JavaScript and PHP stand-alone scripts which had to be used for hybrid sites (with static and dynamic pages), I have contributed by translating them from English to Italian, suggested and tested some features for a PHP-based accessible webchat – no longer available due to security and privacy reasons. I have just basic coding skills but even without knowing how to make a script from scratch, I give my contribution to fix screen reader issues.
First WordPress community contribution: despite going on and off WordPress since 2004, I started my first concrete contribution in 2021 when adopting WP as permanent blog platform, I completed some translations for Codeat Glossary plugin.
What are some important projects or contributions you have made within the WordPress ecosystem?
Some translations to CodeAt Glossary plugin, then feedbacks on Github for ActivityPub and a couple of minor block variations based plugins (Intelli-builder for example).
I am currently working on PlusBrothers.net which is the case study I would like to share with Core Days.
It started as an Italian only blog, created by me and I have my best friend who helps me to write the content; it’s a personal blog about HIV stigma, with real and fantasy stories.
Late 2024 I decided to start with Full Site Editing to have an easier way to customize the site, without too much coding knowledge, thanks to Gutenberg. That way I discovered I could create more templates, different headers, footers, sidebars, so I had italian-page and english-page.
Basically a pluginless multi-lingual structure had been created.
Trouble came with “standard” templates such as tag/author/category archives, 404, and search results which did not distinguish if a category was the English or Italian one so I had to create a custom code – an external dev has helped me, then reading the dev’s code I have managed to improve the custom plugin with a chatbot’s help.
An external, even paid, plugin could help? Yes it could, but most available solutions do not respect accessibility criteria how I’d like them to. And being blind, why should I pay for something not respecting my needs? Better to work on my own and paying who can really help.
What are your thoughts on the current state of WordPress development, and how do you see its future?
WordPress has become most used CMS in the world and this allows to discover many interesting case studies and specific needs: from accessibility to security to performance, data liberation and visual needs. I think many features should be improved, community does its best to satisfy standard needs but they are quite basic and we must too much rely on third-party plugins, with all consequent risks on accessibility, privacy, security that if WordPress tries to cover natively, it is not guaranteed in third-party products.
What advice would you give to developers who are new to WordPress or open source?
Involve communities at your best: “nothing about us without us” is a basic rule which should be considered in every project. Be it e-commerce, photography site, food blog and so on … before and during development process community needs have to be all kept into consideration.
Which areas do you think need new energy and focus right now, and why? (Accessibility, plugins, themes, performance, etc.)
Accessibility, Privacy, Security: these are three milestones we cannot go without and which must be kept in consideration as first priority, from the beginning; lately WordPress has been affected by plenty of vulnerabilities involving third-party plugins, so, community should address best and worst scenarios. As a blind content creator I find many themes and plugins developers to ignore accessibility and this limits drastically the adoption of some easy solutions.
What can we do to ensure that WordPress continues to work well with new technologies and stays ahead of trends? (Programming methods, new tech areas, headless, etc.)
Data Liberation is essential: develop solutions which allow to switch to new themes rapidly, exporting data painlessly. IMHO federated platforms are the future.
How do you keep up with the latest trends in WordPress development, and what resources would you suggest for new developers who want to get involved?
I’m lately using the Fediverse (open federated platforms) following the #WordPress hashtag. I’d invite developers and testers to interact more with open web, allowing everyone to get the chance to test and contribute new solutions. I often check for new plugins in WordPress repository but at that stage it’s too late, maybe to improve a plugin or theme, people should be aware it’s being developed.
In your opinion, what are the best ways to engage and attract new developers to the WordPress community, and how can we make the onboarding process more welcoming and inclusive?
I’d take the AI/ChatBot chance to allow people to learn interactively. There is huge documentation in the WordPress resources but it is often complex to read; so, it would be interesting to have an automated system which guides you through the studying process, you can ask it questions, it gives you exercises and allows you to test them – a sort of playground where to test code and have explanations on what to do.
Then, the next stage, would be the ability to give your code to human testers to ensure vulnerabilities closure, errors, etc.
