Episode Notes

[Music] [Narelle] Hi and welcome to our next edition of The Digital Access Show. Today, I want to introduce you to a guy that we've done a bit of work with and we absolutely love working with David, David Oram is from Atomic Web Strategy. David is based in Melbourne and hello David. [David] Hi Narelle, thanks for having me. [Narelle] Well, thanks for coming David. I have actually stuffed up this is the second time we've tape this podcast, because I had a computer problem and you know the second one's never going to be as good as the first. So I apologise, David. David, can you tell us a bit about yourself? What you do? [David] So I've been in IT for over 10 years. Originally, started it out in the search marketing game. We were originally working in partnership with Yahoo at one point and when Yahoo pulled out of Australia, I then moved on to web development and providing those services to clients. Specializing in WordPress. That is the most popular CMS and also great CMS for WCAG accessibility. So we chose to specialize in that area. The services that we mostly provide website maintenance, a design, rebuilding of websites, SEO services and of course accessibility. [Narelle] What is it with WordPress that makes it a good tool for you to use with everything that you're doing? Is, What is the attraction? [David] Well, other than the fact that it's extremely popular, I think it powers over 60% of websites now. It's also that ease of use and the availability of software because it's an open source platform. So there's lots and lots of options for adding functionality to websites. Both free and paid versions of various plugins, wide variety of themes and also some great page builders. Especially, over the last few years the the page builder software has improved dramatically. We first saw, Divi come along which was groundbreaking and then Elementor came along which seems to have overtaken Divi. Which makes it a lot easier, not only for us but also for the end user. thatt means that our clients can now update their own website. Certainly, in terms of page content like text and images, and things like that. Makes it so much easier for them. Whereas in the past with the classic editor, I mean that was quite challenging for them. Supposedly, easy but when they actually try to do it without a technical knowledge, it was yeah, proves to be a little bit too hard and then having to pay for maintenance and simple things like that. [Narellle] So WordPress, you can bring in the SEO quite easily through WordPress as well. All the other things you're talking about, accessibility. It's, it's quite a adaptable tool then is it? [David] Yes, so out of the box. The developers of WordPress have put some thought in clearly to SEO and accessibility uhm, so out of the box, it's pretty close. It's one of the best in terms of meeting those requirements for onsite SEO and accessibility guidelines. [Narelle] What is it that attracts you to building website, designing websites? What is there for you that that makes you say yeah, I want to just keep doing this? What do you love about it? [David] I guess uhm, creative. I really, really enjoy IT. I actually originally started out as an accountant but. [Narelle] You're kidding? [David] Yeah, yeah but then got into IT later on because that was that was the area that I, I really enjoyed. So I went into development and coding. So my creativity is more in that direction rather than in artistic design. [Narelle] Yes. [David] So yeah, I just like, I guess I like building things. [Narelle] How did you get into accessibility then? What, what made you look at accessibility? [David] Well, it's part of SEO. I picked up on that early on doing reports for clients on SEO and noticed that Google was starting to include that now as part of their algorithm. So it was interesting that they put that importance on it. Also, there's a history of blindness, blindness in my family as well so. So I'm aware of