Adrian is a founder and partner at Algonquin Studios, responsible for bridging the gap between the worlds of design and technology. With experience in both, he brings a unique perspective to projects, allowing both design and implementation to merge seamlessly.

View Adrian’s speaker profile.

Presentation: Selfish Accessibility

“We can all pretend that we’re helping others by making web sites accessible, but we are really making the web better for our future selves. Learn some fundamentals of web accessibility and how it can benefit you (whether future you from aging or you after something else limits your abilities).”

“I’m a designer and developer based in Toronto, working primarily with WordPress. I have a degree in technical theatre, I teach with Camp Tech and Ladies Learning Code, and I share my office with a very rambunctious cat.”

View Linn’s speaker profile.

Presentation: Don’t Fear the Custom Theme

“Commercial WordPress themes have to be ready to handle thousands of use-cases, but your custom theme doesn’t. Reducing a theme to its essential components – index.php, style.css, and functions.php – gets your design into the browser as quickly as possible and allows for rapid prototyping based on client feedback. It’s also an easy way for beginners to start developing with WordPress, without getting lost in dozens of files.”

“I have more than fourteen years of web development experience, have been a regular contributor to WordPress for the last seven years, and even co-lead the WordPress 3.6 release. I have experience writing quality code that is both fast and scalable, and have a knack for translating ideas and goals into functional sites.”

View Aaron’s speaker profile.

Presentation: Community: Getting Involved

“You love WordPress? Want to pitch in and help out? Not sure how? It doesn’t matter if you’re a designer, a developer, a translator, or just someone that uses WordPress on your own site, you can help make WordPress better and I’ll show you how. From helping answer people’s simple questions to landing your first patch in core (c’mon, who doesn’t want that!?!)”

Marc Benzakein has been working online since the mid 90s, starting as a Network Administrator for a small, independent ISP in Southern California and has been involved in almost all aspects of technology. In 2009, he started developing in WordPress, first for his own purposes and then for clients. In early 2013, he got involved with ServerPress, LLC, makers of DesktopServer, a local development tool created for WordPress designers and developers.

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Presentation: How to Rock a WordCamp Even if You’re a n00b

In this talk I would cover 12 steps on how to get the most out of your WordCamp as well as how to start giving back to the Community on Day One. If you are new to WordPress or WordCamps, set yourself up for success by making sure you don’t miss this great kick-off to our two-day event!

Hello, I’m Patrick Dunphy. I’m a Senior UI Architect & Accessibility Specialist at CBC. I’m also co-lead for Accessibility Camp Toronto as well as the Toronto Accessibility & Inclusive Design meetup group (the largest of it’s kind globally with almost 450 members).

Though I’d consider myself a WordPress newbie, Accessibility is not unique to any one platform.

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Presentation: The 5 W’s of Accessibility Testing

Intended for people new to accessibility testing, this session details freely available testing tools and how they relate to identifying different user issues.

“I am a contributing developer to WordPress and was recognized as a “Rockstar” for my role in the revisions rewrite for WordPress 3.6. I am currently the revisions component maintainer. I work as a Senior Web Engineer at 10up. I love long rafting trips, playing mbira, travel, taking walks and tending my over sized garden.”

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Presentation: Put a little Backbone in your WordPress!

Backbone (and Underscore!) are bundled with WordPress – explore how you can leverage their power to deliver complex user experiences while keeping your code organized and maintainable. When and why should you use Backbone? How can WordPress help?

Kathryn thrives on helping people get the most out of WordPress. After a career designing and building websites for clients, she joined Automattic as a Happiness Engineer in 2012 and is a member with theTheme Team, where she help folks with all types of theme-related issues on both WordPress.com and self-hosted sites.

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Presentation: Getting Comfortable With Child Themes

Child themes are a simple but powerful way to customize a pre-made theme. Learning how to use them properly means you’ll never risk losing all your modifications when the developer releases a new version and you update the theme. Using easy-to-follow language, I’ll walk you through the steps to set up a child theme and we’ll get started making some tweaks – from CSS look-and-feel adjustments to more substantial changes in functionality.

Jordan Quintal is a successful Online Multipreneur, a seasoned Web Developer, as well as a WordPress Contributor and Community Member. Jordan is the current President at The Genius Web Media Inc. that was founded in 2007, and he has over 15 years of web development experience.

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Presentation: Organizing fully accessible communities

Most of us have discovered that WordPress.org has made efforts into making the WordPress platform more web accessible to those with physical and mental challenges, as a website publishing platform, but what about WordPress communities?

“I’ve spoken at numerous WordCamps over the years and am currently working on an book for new users to WordPress. I work exclusively in WordPress and have been for some time, whether as a developer, college educator or building a telco grade platform based on WordPress.”

View Al’s speaker profile.

Presentation: WordPress 101

This presentation is aimed at those who are new to WordPress and want to get a guided headstart. We’ll be looking at the WordPress landscape, some basic terms and terminology that will really help you get started, and tips and tricks acquired over years of teaching WordPress in a classroom setting.

“An unstoppable force for change and thought-leader in an industry regarded for saying “No”, I’d rather lead by example in saying “Yes, and here’s how…”. I seek to offer solutions to complex problems relating to universal usability. Together we can meet both our goals: your business goals and my goals to lead the way in accessible user experience.”

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Presentation: Next-gen A11y Testing Tools

Since the invention of the Web, we’ve never experienced the kind of explosion in new techniques for developers to ensure efficiency and quality of their work – from JavaScript task runners to unit testing & acceptance testing, to continuous integration and automated build & deploy systems. Modern web developers can and should leverage these toolsets to make their work better. This talk will discuss how Tenon.io uses many of these tools to create our product – an automated web accessibility testing API.