 Hi, everyone. Thank you. Oh my goodness. What an honor to be here and hello to those watching online So as you mentioned, I'm Sally Thun and you covered a couple of points in my presentation. So But I'm here to share my incredible journey with accessibility and wordpress over the past two years to help Hopefully inspire the same passion and purpose that you wordpress and accessibility people have Inspired in me little did I know when I started two years ago that I would be here speaking So please just bear with me. So I want to show you that it's never too late Or too early no matter how long you've been on this earth to start a new career or learn something new if I can do it So can you? I'm also going to be providing resources that I'll post later this week on my LinkedIn Or Twitter page of a lot of the resources you're going to see so don't feel like you have to take a lot of notes. So Before I begin I want to acknowledge that being here would not be possible Without the support and belief of Joe Simpson, Jr. And Summer Davenport who gave me so much guidance over the past two years and as of last night triple-a So as he mentioned I live in central, California where the four seasons but I grew up in Montreal, Quebec, Canada and as you know Canadians were born with skates on our feet even though I'm a US citizen now and My dream as a little girl was to be the first female player in the NHL But men only own beat me to that in 1992 So and I come from an entrepreneurial family and even though I spent most of my career in broadcast entertainment with Warner Brothers and Disney My grandfather actually opened up the first movie cinema in Montreal in 1905, which is pretty cool So I have my own digital marketing agency and with COVID had a lot of extra time on my hands And I took a few digital marketing classes to enhance my skills and my teacher always talked about LDT Learn do and teach and at this point. I had not heard of a word camp. I had not heard of a wapu Or github and I heard of a meet-up and I heard of accessibility Whoops, sorry, but I wasn't sure exactly what they were all about And I don't want to assume that everyone here knows what digital accessibility is But it's really about removing digital barriers the global pandemic brought the importance of accessibility to the forefront when we had to pivot over line pretty much overnight and It really left a lot of people out that couldn't Access a lot of the websites and there's about one in five people worldwide with a disability of all various kinds and So we want to ensure that their assistive technology can help us use the websites So my learning journey began when I attended my first meet-up I've worked with WordPress developers, but I wanted to create my own website And I attended my first one in Bakersfield, California with mr. Mike Pilly and when we were allowed to ask questions I was like, can you please tell me about accessibility and he's like, well, funny you ask we have a special guest here tonight Mr. Joe Simpson jr. And he told me about the upcoming WordPress day camp for three of the northern Los Angeles meet-ups team together and That Saturday August 8th 2020 my accessibility journey began and I was beyond excited Halfway through I was hooked and even though I didn't understand everything that was said that day It made a lot more sense the more classes that I took so I dove deeper actually headfirst and learned all I could about accessibility, which if you don't know Is the abbreviation is a 11 y because there's 11 letters before a between the letters a and y So my learning continued with the courses with the edx Introduction to accessibility course that some may recommend it And I love this course because it really really gives you an overview and good foundation of how people living with disabilities use their assistive technology and why we really need to make websites accessible and I'm not going to have time because this is a lightning talk to take you through all of these but you can download all the resources and I do want to say that if you didn't know LinkedIn your local library offers a lot of LinkedIn classes for free so you can check with them and save some money there and Conferences are another great way to learn and Web accessibility in mind who does the million-dollar study of the accessibility of website homepages Had their first conference yesterday And they'll be posting those later in a couple of months and you can watch those if you're a designer There's ID 24 coming up if you're interested in the legal side of accessibility there is the digital accessibility legal summit and of course we've got WordPress accessibility day coming up in November and Word camps and kicking off 2023 is a season which is pretty large acts calm nobilities coming up in May and the University of Minnesota Duluth puts an incredible list of every website and conference And webinar story on accessibility on the lot on their website, so you can always check that there so and there are also podcasts and Facebook groups There's over a hundred and twenty five accessibility meet-ups and the newest addition is the accessible social website Which will teach you how to make all of your social media accessible So and then LinkedIn and Twitter have a lot of the conversations as well So now that I've been learning it was time to do and I asked Joe Simpson, Jr. Who I eventually called my guiding light How I could get involved and he introduced me to the organizers of word camp 2020 for LAX and That was I joined in late as a volunteer wrangler But everyone was just so welcoming and I just want to say to all of you in the WordPress community Thank you. You guys are just so gracious. You don't judge. You share your knowledge I come from broadcast sales where it's very competitive and no one tells you anything and You just want to make us all better. So I really appreciate you sharing all of that and And you know volunteering gives you a great opportunity to meet new people, too So after that, I asked my guiding light Joe and I said Joe I really want to put my new accessibility skills to the test I've been taking a couple courses and what can I do so he introduced me to the organizers of WordPress accessibility day and they just put up all the The Sessions it was 24 hours of everything accessibility at WordPress accessibility day And I was introduced to Jill doleson who is a huge accessibility advocate and he's actually speaking tomorrow And I asked what I can do and they needed blogs written. I'd love to write content So I wrote all the sponsor blogs For the sponsors no pressure, but it actually worked out really well really really well and During this time I was still attending a lot of meet-ups and Sumner Davenport has one in the Valley with Ron Amick and Jennifer H and it's also now eligible for the International Association of Accessibility professional credits for a certification and it returns in the fall again, there's always the 125 to attend so I really so she told us about the internet rally which Mike mentioned and I really wanted to be on her team but it was full and I wanted to be I learned by doing so I want to be on a team to create a website for a nonprofit from start to finish and As her team was full I signed up as an individual and I was paired with these two lovely ladies from Texas for new and Carmina And we called ourselves a digital diversity divas well We're not really divas, but we just want to have fun And we had a great mentor from Australia who was just encouraging support of and really helped us cross the finish line Our nonprofit was uniformed meditation that does meditation for frontline workers and first responders And we really loved that idea which made it more fun to work on So there is a misconception that accessible websites are can be ugly or they're not pretty and That's just not true. So here's the website that we built now. I beg to differ I may be a little biased, but you can see that it evokes that calm that we were trying to Get across so on January 3rd 2021 nobility announced the winners and We won third place and we were all new to accessibility. We were shocked We were just there to have fun and learn our skills And it just really told me that I was on the right path and I was meant to continue doing this so volunteering is another great way to do and Enhance your skills or give back and I've met so many incredible people volunteering that I otherwise never would have met And nobility is always looking for volunteers. You can go to the nobility.org website And of course, there's 21 teams that make WordPress waiting for you guys to volunteer your skill sets And then I came across taproot which works with nonprofits and helps them do their websites Non-profits that don't have any money. So that's something you can look into and then all there's also your local nonprofits so Let me say so with everyone at home Volunteering really helped Kimi saying and you can see all on the screen all the amazing benefits of it And I just want to say to the accessibility advocates that have been doing this for a really long time Thank you Just like the WordPress community you guys are so selfless you share your knowledge You have poured in so much to all of us who are trying to learn so we can continue and build up the accessibility community So after air rally Joe invited me to be under an organizing team for Santa Clarita 2021 and it was a very different experience coming in at the end than at the beginning So now that I've learned and done it's time to teach and I had the opportunity to speak to the California CESA of California State University Bakersfield about accessibility and They wanted some help with their first Google ads campaign So I had them create an accessible landing page. I mean a landing page. It was not accessible So I made them create one with the theme 2021 and they did pretty well above average results but Universities aren't really teaching accessibility So if you can reach out to your local colleges or universities that would really help accelerate the process so Also, they're looking for someone to teach WordPress basic. So if you're interested, please see me So I'm going to so I just want to talk briefly because there was a woman this morning that talked about technology and websites and WordPress accessible websites It's all about a great user experience You have to have a strong foundation and not build it on quicksand to meaning build the code in from the beginning There's no shortcuts. No easy fixes. No band-aids and Disability colon in sums it up in 10 words. Don't buy or sell tech that disabled people can't use and There's a 3070 rule that it's 30% more time and money to start from the beginning Building your blueberries into your muffin is an analogy We use rather than trying to go back and kind of stuff it in and just put it on the top and WordPress has a 92 accessible themes. So to help you get started So then air rally 2021 came around and they want asked me to mentor But I still didn't feel comfortable so I asked if I could co-mentor and they allowed me to mentor with Sumner and She is just has a ton of experience and knowledge and really carried us through and When the announcements came we had we had team access hippos for best their brain injury survivor non-product non-profit sorry and she knows so much that she was affectionately called Ali Einstein and We won second place and as much fun as it was I realized how much I still have to learn Accessibility is a journey and as Merrill Evans says she's a huge accessibility advocate It's progress not perfection. So air rally 2022 kicked off yesterday And I'm going for a hat trick and for these that don't know what a hat trick is it's when you score three goals in a game of Hockey and I met my team. They're all from California and you know what our team name is I Wish they all could be Cali girls So we're gonna have a lot of fun So here are some my I just want to start warning down with my late aunt Lizzie She always said we're not here to see through each other But to see each other through and I love it because it really summarizes with the WordPress and accessibility community is all about Here are some advocates to follow in no particular order and you'll find your own as you continue again all these resources I'll be sharing the links and You know my next steps is to continue learning HTML the accessible code so excited when I wrote my first Code if you guys remember all that and then finish my accessible website actually with building blocks and Finish my DQ courses to become certified Continue learning WordPress and collect those pins. I want those. I just got my first one today So I'm I hope you've and here's just some unexpected highlights over the past two years and being named a Yoast care fund recipient was just Really incredible and of course being here at WordCamp US So it's never too late and I just want to say that we all have life's challenges But just go out there and learn and don't let anything stop you I'm a three-time cancer survivor and I was only I hit my Five-year mark in March and I was diagnosed early Thank you. It's only 15 percent of people of women are so that tells me that I'm still meant to be here and make a Difference and that's why I'm up here to do what I can with all of you to make the website and the world accessible one website at a time so Thank you, and here's my contact information and I'll be around if anyone has any questions