Karl Groves

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.

I have over a decade experience in doing IT consulting for the biggest companies in the world and biggest agencies in the US Government. Widely regarded as a pragmatic solution-finder, my work is cited in nearly a dozen books and used on curricula in Human-Computer Interaction across the globe. I lead by doing, I teach from experience, and I succeed by facilitating others’ success. When others say “That can’t be done” I show them how.

With a wide array of experiences involving the development and management of web sites & web based applications, I’ve done it all – from design, production & programming to consulting, management of development teams & projects to managing the e-commerce efforts of a site which handled $4,000,000 in volume per month.

I’ve done accessibility and usability evaluation, consulting, and remediation work for everyone from Fortune 50 companies to some of the largest federal government agencies and private sector software vendors in the world.

It is my goal to continue to provide my expertise and guidance to my clients – with an end goal of making the IT landscape more usable and accessible for all.

Speaking session

Next-gen A11y TestingTools In the A11y track

Your presentation

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.

What do you want people to learn from your presentation?

Attendees will learn ways to integrate software development best practices to manage quality and accessibility.

Why did you decided to speak?

As above, I’m a big fan of sharing knowledge between others. Although I’m widely regarded as an expert, I appreciate not only sharing my knowledge with others but also learning new things.

What attracted you to WordPress in the first place?

I settled on WordPress because of the flexibility of theming and extension development. I’ve been a PHP developer for a long time. When I first got started, Mambo was what everyone loved. Over the years, Mambo/ Joomla and even Drupal have all proven themselves to be disappointments when compared to the flexibility of WordPress and the ecosystem that surrounds it.

What is your favourite plugin or theme, and why?

I really like Joe Dolson’s WP to Twitter. It is by far the most robust WP to Twitter plugin I’ve ever used.

What are you most looking forward to at WordCamp Toronto?

The knowledge exchange.