WPCampus is excited to announce the schedule for our June 11 summit, “Rollbacks, Recovery & Rebuilding: Lessons Learned from What Went Wrong”. Our speakers will present on topics such as leading through change, accessibility, and governance, and share their experiences learning from and through mistakes.
The event is online and free for all to attend, and will take place from 10am-1pm ET. Registration is open now, and you can check out the schedule below!
10:00-11:00am - Leading through Change with Ben Hommerding (Western Governors University)
Ben Hommerding, the Interim Director & Lead Academic Product Manager for IT Programs at Western Governors University, will speak on leading through change and managing projects through difficult periods.
11:05-11:25am - “Why accessibility approaches often fail (and what to do instead)” with Marc Haunschild (Office for Food and Agriculture of the Federal Republic of Germany)
Exclusion rarely begins with ill intent. It begins wherever decisions are made in rooms where people with disabilities are missing.
This session sheds light on the invisible mental load that people with disabilities carry every day: the constant stress of inaccessible environments, the anxiety of missing vital information or opportunities, the exhaustion of masking, and the persistent fear of stigmatisation. These experiences are not isolated edge cases; they are the predictable outcome of systems, products, workplaces, and cultures designed without genuine representation.
Using vivid everyday examples, real-life stories, and a compelling comparison to the well-known concept of "mental load" in relationships, this talk explains why accessibility must not depend on those affected constantly having to speak up, explain themselves, or ask for adjustments.
11:30-11:50am - “When Good Accessibility Intentions Break WordPress Websites” with Joe Lopreste (ClearPath Web Accessibility)
Accessibility work starts with good intentions, but in WordPress, a quick fix can sometimes create new problems. I would know as it has happened to me multiple times. A plugin gets added, a theme setting gets changed, or a small code update is made, and suddenly keyboard users, screen reader users, or even the layout itself are worse off than before.
In this talk, I’ll draw from my own experience to share common ways accessibility fixes can go wrong in WordPress, what teams should watch for before making changes, and how to build better habits so accessibility improvements truly help the people they are meant to support.
11:55-12:15pm - “Lessons learned from adding a new Primary Admin user role in our multisite” with Andrea Roenning (University of Wisconsin - Madison)
In our WordPress multisite that is home to 2,000 websites, we needed a way to track which administrators were really in charge of each website. It's pretty easy to add a new user role that has the same capabilities as an administrator role ... what could possibly go wrong?
This talk explores what we learned while introducing a new user role, how we addressed conflicts with third‑party plugins, and why we ultimately abandoned the custom role in favor of a different approach for tracking each site’s primary contact.
12:30-1:00pm - WPCampus After Hours
After the final session, we’ll end the day with a more informal get-together where attendees can discuss the day’s presentations and catch up.