Introducing WPCampus Speaker: Andrew Ortolano

Andrew Ortolano will be joining us at WPCampus 2017 to present an accessibility case study for accordions and tabs. You can see him in action on Saturday, July 15 at 1:45 p.m.

Tell us about your first website or digital project. What was the spark for you?
My first website was built for an engineering firm where I worked; all tables, sliced graphics and font tags. I’d done some BASIC programming in high school, but the ability to suddenly produce graphic layouts was pretty mind-blowing.

Why higher education?
Because I believe in education! I’ve worked on projects for oil companies, car companies, credit card companies. At some point, you look at your desktop and wonder if the world is a better, or worse place if more people know about the 22% APR Starter Card from Potter Building and Loan.

Tell us about the topic of your session. Why is it important to you?
The very specific issue that I’ll be addressing was one that presented serious challenges to my team, and for which – shocking! – there was not a pre-rolled solution on Stack Overflow. But providing accessibility to all content to all users is vitally important. I’m proud of the solution my team came up with, and excited about what someone else might do in terms of building on that.

Who do you follow on Twitter and why?
I’m bad at Twitter. I mostly just follow folks who bicycle commute and share the same route as me, and who Tweet about the trail conditions.

Why do you ♥️ WPCampus?
Because I ♥️ WordPress, and want to encourage its growth in the higher ed space.

If someone designed a wapuu for you, what would it look like?
I’m not totally sure, but I think it’d be on a bike.

What WordPress, or other, tool can you not live without?
Sublime Text; CodeKit; MAMP; AWS.