Sponsor My Work - Maja Benke

About Me

Hej 👋 I’m Maja Benke from Berlin, Germany.

I’m an Accessibility Consultant and Webdesigner and have a passion for Traveling, Nature, Bouldering, Art and Accessibility.

In 2015 I joined my first WordCamp in Cologne, met the WordPress Community and attended my first Contributor Day. There I started contributing and discovered soon my passion for Accessibility.

Where has WordPress taken you?

Interview in WordCamp Brighton 2017

My Contributions

I started contributing in 2015, mainly in the Accessibility Team, because that is where my passion is. I have helped in writing a part of the Accessibility Handbook, and worked on Tickets in both Meta and Core. In addition I organise the Berlin WordPress Meetup and the A11y Meetup Berlin and was a Co-Organizer of WordCamp Berlin.

Sometimes I translate Themes or Plugins and I love to Speak at WordCamps about Accessibility.

At the moment I can only contribute 5 hours per week,
but I would love to contribute more (10h or more per week).

Contribution History

My talk at WCEU 2018 in Belgrade about Accessible Design

She gave one of the best presentations at WordCamp Europe about the impact of dyslexia we ever saw.
The A11y Collective (Newsletter)

Badges for the Following Teams: Accessibility Contributor and Team Member, Core, Documentation, Meetup Organizer, Meta, Plugin Developer, Translation Contributor and Editor, WordCamp Organizer and WordCamp Speaker

Referral

Maja has contributed to the accessibility of WordPress for many years. She’s thorough, and her contributions are always well thought out and detailed.

Maja’s commitment to accessibility shines through in everything she touches, and this thoughtfulness is of great value to the WordPress project and to anyone she works with.

WordPress is constantly short of expertise on accessibility, and expanding Maja’s contributions would have an incredible impact on our ability to move WordPress forward in this area.

I’ve been a web developer for nearly 30 years, and I’ve known a lot of people building the web in that time. Maja Benke knows more about accessability than anyone I’ve ever worked with.

Having her consistently contribute to the WordPress project in that area would literally change the way the web works for potentially tens of thousands of people.

As a certified accessibility specialist, Maja always makes sure not to treat accessibility as a feature, but an integral part of every project I have worked on with her.

She has s good eye for inclusive design and truly cares about an accessible website, both technically and within the content. She is focussed and values clear communication, which makes working with her a real pleasure.

Accessibility is not just a feature for Maja, that gets check off from a project’s checklist. In the projects we have worked together, making the result accessible was of highest priority for her. That doesn’t only include the technical parts, but also the content of the website.

Anyone meeting Maja for the first time can see, that she is really passionate about accessibility. When she is not organizing the Berlin meetup group around accessibility, you can find her on stage of a WordPress conference giving a talk. I had the pleasure to visit many of them over the years, and even when I think I know everything about the topic she is presenting, I still learn something new.

Podcast-Episodes

IONOS Podcast Episode about Accessibility (in german)
Capital_P_odcast: Podcast from Bernhard Kau and me about WordPress (in german)

My Goals

In the last couple years I have not been contribute as much, but I would love to start again. Mainly for the following Projects:

Project 1: Theme Review

40% of my contribution time.

I would like to test Themes for the Accessibility-Ready-Tag. Also I have been asked to train and create video content on how to test themes for the accessibility-ready-tag. Currently I work on a better Workflow to test Themes for the accessibilty-ready-tag.

Project 2: Train and Educate

30% of my contribution time.

Project 3: Testing, Testing, Testing

10% of my contribution time.

Testing WordPress Core
Testing new Core Features
Testing of the Block Editor and Full Site Editing

More Projects

20% of my contribution time.

Explore UI Structure for destructive actions
Accessibility Statement Generator
Improving Onboarding in German Docs Team

Why Sponsor Me

WordPress needs still a lot of work in Accessibility and I think my expertise as an Accessibility Consultant would be beneficial.
Because of that, I’m looking for a sponsorship for the Accessibility Team.

Your Benefits

Support Accessibility in WordPress, will help all companies who are releying on WordPress to make it fit for the Future. As Accessibility becoming more important, by a better awerness in the society and by laws
Supporting Accessibility in WordPress means, that around 43% of the Internet is getting more accessible.
Make your own product and team fit for accessibility. I can consult you and test your products for accessibility.

How to sponsor me

Invoice

You can support me by donating based on VAT Invoice. Just contact me and we can arrange an Invoice, based on our agreement.

Contract based

For companies seeking sustainable support for contributors to the open-source WordPress project, they can hire me on a contract basis for up to 15 hours per week.

Contact me

You want to support my work? Thats great! Just contact me via mail@maja-benke.de or send me a message via the contact form.