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My personal blog has been powered by WordPress for the past 8 and a half years and will continue to be in the future. I chose
as my blog platform primarily due to its commitment to web site accessibility. Accessibility means ensuring that everyone, including people with disabilities like myself, has equal access to its blog platform. The other equally important reason I use WordPress is its team of technical support personnel, known as Happiness Engineers. I have needed Happiness Engineer advice occasionally over the years and a recent episode demonstrates anew how helpful and valuable they are.
Several years ago I made the decision to upgrade my WordPress blog so that it is now on its own web site domain. Since that time, I wanted to add link text labels to URLs referenced in some of my blog posts to improve link accessibility for screen reader users like myself. I could not figure out how, so I recently contacted the WordPress Happiness Team and was given directions on how to accomplish that task. Everything was fine when I added link text label in one blog entry. For whatever reason, I had serious difficulty doing same thing in another old blog post. I was given various suggestions from several different Happiness Engineers who did their best to assist with my issue. Difficulty continued and eventually landed in the email box of Sandy. I consider him to be a genius! He gave me a solution which resolved my problem successfully. If in the future I have problems adding a text link label in a blog post using one method, I am confident that the alternate solution provided by Sandy will work for me. “Happiness Engineer” is definitely an apt term because I am very happy at present!
If I were rich, I would give Sandy the genius and his colleagues an expense-paid vacation in the Bahamas or somewhere else. The reality is I am not a rich man. I can, however, express my sincere gratitude for the assistance rendered to me by the Happiness Engineers. The team’s consistent willingness to help, patience and courtesy demonstrated by all is much appreciated!
Conclusion: Keep up the fantastic work WordPress. Thank you for providing assistance to bloggers and designing WordPress to be equally accessible to everyone!
Blake's talk 