FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

August 17, 2023

The WP Community Collective is proud to announce the successful funding and launch of their inaugural Fellowship program, the WPCC Accessibility Fellowship. This pioneering initiative represents a significant advancement in the WordPress community’s commitment to accessibility, and demonstrates the WPCC’s dedication to supporting inclusivity and growth within the Make WordPress contributor community.

Long-term WordPress contributor Alex Stine was selected by the WPCC as the inaugural Accessibility Fellow as a result of his expertise in accessibility and seven years of experience as a WordPress contributor. Stine understands the challenges people can face using and contributing to WordPress from his personal experience as a web developer who is fully blind, though it is his commitment to helping WordPress meet the wide-ranging accessibility needs of its diverse community that is motivating him to take on the Fellowship.

“This is about moving accessibility forward,” Stine said of the Accessibility Fellowship. “I just happen to be the first person to do it.”

As the WPCC’s first Fellow, Stine will collaborate with the organization to develop a framework for future Accessibility Fellowship cohorts, emphasizing accessibility as well as transparency and communication.

The Fellowship, funded through the contributions of 59 individual donors and organizations, will provide Stine with five paid contribution hours each week for six months. This will support his continued contribution to WordPress, including working directly on accessibility reviews and patches in WordPress core, while expanding the visibility of his community work, such as his recent accessibility audit of Gutenberg. The Fellowship also includes a travel stipend to support Stine’s attendance at the upcoming WordCamp US, where he is serving as an co-organizer and participating in the Community Summit.

“Alex has demonstrated a deep commitment to creating an inclusive experience for all WordPress users,” said Sé Reed, co-founder and president of the WPCC. “We are delighted by the community’s willingness to invest both in Alex and in the future of WordPress accessibility. In supporting his work, we aim to improve accessibility across the entire project, from the core software to the greater WordPress community.”

The successful funding of the WPCC Accessibility Fellowship marks the establishment of the first-ever Fellowship program in the WordPress contributor space – and it is just the beginning. The WPCC will continue to fundraise for future cohorts of the Accessibility Fellowship on an ongoing basis, and will be announcing more initiatives and partnerships supporting WordPress and WordPress contributors in the near future.

About The WP Community Collective

The WP Community Collective is a nonprofit organization that supports and funds individual contribution to and community-based initiatives for the open-source WordPress project.

For more information about the the WPCC or the Accessibility Fellowship, please contact thewpcommunitycollective@gmail.com

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