Joseph Karr O&rsquo;Connor

Joseph Karr O’Connor

Joseph Karr O'Connor (May 23, 1953 - January 3, 2020) was an American computer scientist, accessibility advocate, and a main accessibility contributor to WordPress. O'Connor became the Accessibility Team representative for WordPress in 2013, leading the team through 2015 and stepping down in 2016. He created the Accessibility Cities initiative which enlisted an international group of designers to create free and accessible WordPress themes named after the cities the designers were from. Partially as a result of this initiative WordPress went from zero to eighteen accessible themes from 2013 to 2014.
O'Connor highlighted the work of WordPress accessibility on the Web Axe podcast with Dennis Lembrée. He organized the Los Angeles Accessibility and Inclusive Design group in 2012 which hosted regular events for Global Accessibility Awareness Day. He was a regular attendee of the CSUN Assistive Technology Conference and presented regularly with Dennis Lembrée about the accessibility of Twitter. Joseph's final submission to the 35th CSUN conference was an Accessible Death - Proposal, discussing how to help a family member with intellectual disabilities manage the death of a parent. He did not live to give this talk, and passed away January 3, 2020.
O'Connor worked on web accessibility at SCI-Arc, Pasadena City College, and California State University, Northridge, as well maintained a side business doing web accessibility. He was active with the CSUN Academic Technology Committee, often advocating for better ADA compliance. He spoke at many events about WordPress and accessibility including how to build accessible WordPress themes, how to build accessible UX by creating personas with disabilities, and how to create accessible UX in a WordPress site.
In 2011 CSUN was ranked second for website accessibility in America's universities. Joseph responded humbly by saying "This honor, by no means definitive, is nonetheless an indication that we are on the right track. When we create websites, we are mindful of the welfare of all of our students, faculty, staff, and the public."
O'Connor inspired many in the accessibility community, such as Jared Smith writing for WebAIM discussing how people doing accessibility work, "spend at least as much time motivating for change as we do educating on implementation details." He graduated from Fordham University in 1975, and pursued a career in film. Joseph had a part in the 1993 movie A Formula for Mayhem. He married Linda in 1988 and his wife's purchase of a Macintosh computer inspired him to transition to a career in technology. Their daughter Siobhan was born in 1992. <ref name="Telephone 2020" />

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