We’re all responsible for content accessibility with Kenzie Woodbridge

📣 Special announcement: The Not-Boring Tech Writer team (Kate and Chad) will be at Write the Docs Portland in May. Thanks to KnowledgeOwl's sponsorship, they’ll be wearing KnowledgeOwl and The Not-Boring Tech Writer t-shirts and giving out The Not-Boring Tech Writer stickers. If you're attending WTD Portland this year, please say hi to Kate and Chad, let them know what you think of the show, and swing by the conference swag table to grab some free stickers so you can flaunt your not-boring tech writer status with the world!_____________________________________________In this episode, I’m talking with Kenzie Woodbridge, a documentarian and self-taught accessibility advocate. We talk about how feeling “not expert enough” is no reason to skip content accessibility, four ways you can make your content more accessible right now, and ways you can serve as an accessibility advocate as you review content and work with contributors.—Kenzie and I discuss why content accessibility is something we all need to think about as we create content. You don’t have to be an expert to improve your content’s accessibility. We discuss four areas you can focus on right now:Use actual headings (h1, h2, etc.)Use sequential and hierarchical headings (for example, don’t skip straight from h1 to h3)Use link text that’s actually descriptive, rather than “Click here” or “See more”Add alt textWe also discuss some dos and don’ts with alt text, providing feedback to content contributors who aren’t following accessibility guidelines, tools or processes to help identify accessibility bugaboos in your content, and so much more. Check out the resource list below to sponge a ton of useful resources from Kenzie, too.About Kenzie WoodbridgeKenzie works at the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) in British Columbia, Canada, as a Tech Writer, Trainer, and Knowledge Strategist, and is currently a co-chair of BCIT's Accessibility Committee. They have spoken about documentation and other topics at multiple technical conferences, including Write the Docs (their favourite). Kenzie is also a parent, a tuba player, chronically ill, a crafting dilettante, a gamer, and all around nerd who wrote their Master's thesis about prosocial community in multiplayer Minecraft.Kenzie is awesome and you totally want to have them as your friend (offer of friendship void where local laws do not permit, not guaranteed in all circumstances, skill-testing questions required).Resources discussed in this episode:Screen Reader Demo - The video Kenzie mentioned by Marc Sutton at U of CDigital Accessibility Toolkit from the Government of CanadaWhat is Accessibility? (MDN docs)Digital Collegium (formerly HighEdWeb) Accessibility Summit 2025Sa11y & Editoria11y: Straightforward content accessibility at scale - The conference talk Kenzie mentioned comparing two tools for promoting and checking accessibility within content management systems:Sa11y Accessibility Quality Assurance Assistant - One of the two tools discussed in the talk, available for Joomla, WordPress, or as a bookmarklet in your browserEditoria11y Accessibility Checker - The second tool, available for Drupal, WordPress, and SquarespaceWAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools - The WAVE browser extension is Kenzie’s go-to tool for a first pass on accessibility questions. It gives a lot of complex info, which can be overwhelming, but a) if you're seeing a lot of actual errors and contrast errors, you don't have to understand all of those errors to know that there's likely a problem, and knowing there's a problem is the first step 😉, and b) the "Structure" tool quickly shows you a list of the headings on the page and makes it easy to spot skipped levels, etc.Pericles screen reader - Not as fully featured as JAWS or NVDA, but useful for quick checks in your browser (Chrome, Edge, Firefox)NVDA screen reader - Downloadable for free, because accessibility really means something to them, but if you're able to donate, please doJAWS screen readerBCIT's Knowledge Base - About Web Content Accessibility—Contact The Not-Boring Tech Writer team:We love hearing your ideas for episode topics, guests, or general feedback:Email: [email protected] the discussion by replying on Bluesky Contact Kate Mueller: LinkedInknowledgewithsass.comContact Kenzie Woodbridge: WebsiteLinkedinContact KnowledgeOwl:KnowledgeOwl.com—TranscriptKate Mueller: [00:00:01] Welcome to The Not-Boring Tech Writer, a podcast sponsored by KnowledgeOwl. Together, we explore topics and hear from other writers to help inspire us, deepen our skills and foster our distinctly not-boring tech writing community.Kate Mueller: [00:00:18] Hi, I'm Kate Mueller and this week I'm so excited to welcome to the pod, Kenzie Woodbridge, whom I met, I want to say, back in 2018 at Write the Docs Portland, probably at the QWERTY event there. I was so excited to be able to get Kenzie on the show, because they are probably one of the best advocates, in my experience, in the Write the Docs community for accessibility. So Kenzie, welcome to the show!Kenzie Woodbridge: [00:00:45] Thank you very much, that is incredibly flattering.Kate Mueller: [00:00:49] Kenzie, to start off, for our listeners who don't know you, can you tell me a little bit about your, I call it, tech writer villain origin story? How did you ever connect with this community in the first place?Kenzie Woodbridge: [00:01:02] I fell into tech writing sideways, which in my experience, in talking to lots of o...