About Anne-Mieke Bovelett
The commercial case for accessibility, built on 27 years of web infrastructure experien
Anne-Mieke Bovelett helps digital agencies and product teams turn accessibility into a measurable business advantage. Most organisations encounter accessibility when a legal deadline arrives or a complaint lands. Anne’s work starts earlier: at the product decisions, design systems and CMS workflows that determine whether a website will work for everyone, before a single line of code is written.
She has been building for the web since the 1990s, working across the Netherlands, Germany and internationally, with clients ranging from retail chains and academic institutions to marketing agencies and enterprise product teams. Her specialty is the intersection where accessibility strategy meets WordPress architecture and e-commerce conversion.
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Conversion, usability, and customer experience
Anne’s favorite words when talking to colleagues and customers are conversion, usability, and customer experience.
Inside and outside the WordPress community, she draws attention to profitable inclusive design and content. She playfully dispels myths such as “Accessible websites are more expensive” and “You can’t create an attractive design if the focus is on accessibility.” Recently she became the co-host at one of the world’s biggest WooCommerce podcasts: Do The Woo. It’s no surprise that her topics are all about accessibility in E-Commerce: All Things WP & Woo – Accessibility with Anne.
Focus
Anne works both in Germany and internationally, providing guidance in Full Site Editing (FSE) for WordPress, and accessibility. In the Netherlands, she has regularly carried out assignments for academic semi-public institutions, retail chains, marketing agencies, web agencies, small businesses and large commercial enterprises, among others. In 2019 she moved to Germany. She is a sought-after consultant when it comes to putting together teams for web projects and advising them on functional and technical design from an accessibility perspective. Anne is a founding team member of Relaunchberatung.de and a Product Ambassador for Greyd.Suite*.
Career
Until 2008, Anne created static websites on a part-time basis alongside her regular job. When she started her own full-service web agency, she started working with several open-source content management systems, like WordPress and CMS Made Simple™. In 2010, she joined the CMS Made Simple™ development team and was responsible for marketing, communications and PR for seven years.
It was an educational time. I owe a lot of knowledge about technical design to the core developers. This knowledge now benefits me in my work as an accessibility consultant. No matter how silly I thought my questions were, one of them always took the time to answer them. And that’s how I became a geek-speak translator.
Anne
Knowing that the ultimate content management system does not exist, she has learned to work with various open-source CMS over the years. CMSMS™, Typo3, Drupal, Joomla, etc. While WordPress has become one of her absolute favorites for various reasons, she will never claim that WordPress is the only way to go.
This is just a very rough summary of a career that started in the 90s. If you are genuinely interested in the dry facts, please visit Anne’s LinkedIn profile.
Read how web accessibility became her greatest passion.
Anne-Mieke can regularly be found in Switzerland and the Netherlands. She lives in Mönchengladbach, near Düsseldorf.
Community
Anne-Mieke has a strong focus on community. Her slogan is: “Creating is fun. Teaching others how to successfully create is bliss.”
As in 2022, 2023, she was part of the organizing team of WordCamp Europe 2024 (one of the largest WordPress events in the world with 3000 participants), and part of the web team at World Cleanup Germany. She contributes to WordPress as a member of the Polyglots Team.
When she’s not working on web-related projects or coaching, she paints or creates recipes for her food blog.
Interviews, recorded presentations and podcasts English
Accessibility, the Payoff for Your Clients WooCommerce Shop – Do The Woo with Bob Dunn
WordPress accessibility in a page builder world – Interview by Matt Medeiros from Matt Report
GoDaddy Pro EMEA Meetup – Accessible Website Architecture and UX – with Maja Loncar, Lazar Bulatovic and Andrija
Anne-Mieke Bovelett and WordPress Opportunity – Women in WP Podcast
Meet Our Leaders: Anne-Mieke Bovelett – Elementor.com
Interviews and podcasts in German
Was hohe Bounce Rates und schlechte Conversion Rates mit Barrierefreiheit zu tun haben – OMT Podcast mit Mario Jung.
Botschafterin für barrierearme Webseiten – Mobitipp
Barrierevoll – Digitale Kohle mit Christian Behrends
Interviews Dutch
Kinsta Kingpin: Anne-Mieke Bovelett – Interview by Kinsta
Attention!
Links with * contain an affiliate link. Proceeds go to support open source developers and inclusion activists. Read more about this at “Why I have affiliate links on my website – full transparency“.