Making WordPress Themes Accessible — Easier Than You Think

In this episode of the Jukebox Podcast from WP Tavern, Nathan Wrigley speaks with Jessica Lyschik about why accessibility in WordPress themes is more approachable than many developers think. Jessica, a long‑time WordPress community member who’s worked in the ecosystem professionally since 2015, shared practical guidance from her WordCamp Europe 2026 talk, “Accessibility in themes: easier than you think.”

Who is Jessica Lyschik

Jessica has been involved with WordPress for many years and transitioned professionally into the ecosystem in 2015. Over time she developed a strong interest in web accessibility, learning by doing, making mistakes, and improving. Her experience spans agencies, theme review work, and community advocacy. She emphasizes that accessibility is a continuous learning process and that once you start seeing the web from other perspectives — for people who are blind, deaf, or have mobility differences — the reasons to act become obvious.

Why accessibility matters — beyond the legal case

There are both legal and moral reasons to prioritize accessibility. Jessica notes a powerful distinction: many accessibility barriers are invisible to able users, which makes them easy to ignore. That invisibility is exactly why advocacy and awareness are essential.

She also highlighted an emerging, practical driver: AI agents. These agents interact with websites programmatically and rely on correct, semantic markup and descriptive content in order to understand and act on pages. In that sense, an AI agent is similar to assistive technology like a screen reader — both need properly structured HTML, labels, and descriptions to operate. As AI becomes more common for tasks like shopping or booking, accessible sites will be easier for agents to parse and automate, giving an extra incentive to build accessibility correctly.

Common low‑hanging fruit

Jessica stresses that many accessibility gains are simple and quick to implement. A few practical, high‑impact items:

• Use correct semantic HTML: header, main, footer, section, and aside. Proper structure helps assistive tech and automated agents understand page layout.
• Add alternative text for images: this is built into WordPress (media library and image block). It’s quick and hugely beneficial.
• Provide skip‑to‑content links: in block themes this can be handled by assigning the main tag to a content group; WordPress will create the skip link for you.
• Label form controls and buttons: icon‑only buttons need accessible names (aria‑label or visible text). This is often an easy fix but can be tedious if retrofitting across many pages — which is why doing it earlier is better.

The habit of accessibility

Jessica describes how accessibility practices become second nature with experience. Small actions — adding aria labels when a button is icon‑only, using proper headings, or ensuring form fields have labels — eventually become part of routine development. When accessibility is integrated from the start, it avoids costly, repetitive fixes later.

Accessibility in WordPress themes: the repo and the requirements

WordPress.org supports an accessibility‑ready tag for themes that meet a set of requirements. These requirements were recently updated; there are currently 18 points themes must meet to get the tag. They include items like appropriate semantic markup and an accessibility.txt file that documents what was done and how to support screen readers with utility classes.

However, the requirements have been noted as being somewhat cryptic to those new to accessibility: they define what to achieve and offer testing instructions, but they don’t always explain the exact technical steps. Jessica would like to see clearer, more technical guidance linked to each requirement so theme authors can quickly understand what code or configuration is needed.

Some facts and the path forward

There are many themes in the WordPress repository — roughly 14,700 at the time Jessica referenced — but only a small percentage (about 270) have the accessibility‑ready tag, roughly 1.5%. Because of that scale, Jessica favors education and better documentation over strict mandatory enforcement. Making the steps clearer and demonstrating how easy some fixes are should encourage wider adoption. She also expects growing pressure from AI agents and broader attention to accelerate improvements.

Block themes vs classic themes

Block themes make many accessibility tasks easier because core handles more structure for you. If you use the correct blocks and template parts (for example, assigning header and footer template parts), WordPress will output appropriate HTML automatically. Search forms and comment forms are handled by core and are accessible when used as intended. Classic themes require more manual work to ensure elements like skip links and proper roles are present.

Because of this, block themes can be a friend to accessibility — but developers still need to know which blocks to use and how to structure templates. Once you adopt accessible patterns in a theme, you can reuse them and avoid repeating manual fixes across multiple projects.

Practical advice for teams

Accessibility is interdisciplinary. While developers provide the technical structure, content authors, designers, and SEO specialists all play a role:

• Content teams should use proper heading hierarchy (H1, then H2, then H3) and write descriptive link text.
• Designers should account for contrast and focus states.
• SEO and product teams should consider skip links and semantic structure.

Training and resources

WCAG and other formal guidance can be dense and hard to read. Jessica recommends learning from accessible, approachable tutorials and creators who translate the standards into practical steps. Within the WordPress community she mentioned individuals like Joe Dolson, Rian Rietveld, Amber Hinds (EqualizeDigital), Anne‑Mieke Bovelett, and outside the community she follows developers like Sara Soueidan. She also promised to share links to helpful resources and talks to make learning easier.

Final thoughts

Jessica’s message is optimistic and practical: many accessibility improvements are straightforward, especially when built into themes from the beginning. Block themes lower the barrier by leveraging core output; small actions like alt text, aria labels for icon buttons, skip links, and proper headings yield large benefits. Better documentation and shared patterns can help move the ecosystem forward without forcing sudden mandates.

If you want to learn more, check the WP Tavern show notes for links to Jessica’s talk and the resources discussed. For theme authors, her advice is clear: start small, build accessibility into your workflow, and use the existing WordPress tools and patterns to make sites work for everyone.