Insights.

The US deadline for digital accessibility just moved to 2027, but the real compliance gap was never your templates – it’s the years of PDFs in your media library. Here’s a triage that scales.

WordPress 7.1 arrives on 19 August with embeddings support in core — the foundation for search that understands meaning, not just keywords. What that means for research archives, knowledge bases, and member content, and five things to do before you switch anything on.

Feature matrices select for confidence, not competence — every agency ticks every box. Five questions that actually discriminate, from the other side of the table.

WordPress 7.0 shipped its AI foundations in May — an abilities registry, a core AI client, and connectors you control. The real opportunity isn’t the features: it’s that AI on your website just became governable.

More of your audience now gets their answer from an AI summary without ever reaching your site. The response isn’t panic or paywalls — it’s becoming the source the answer cites.

The deadline passed in June 2025 and the sky did not fall — but the ground shifted. Accessibility complaints now have teeth, procurement asks harder questions, and “we’re working on it” has a shelf life.

The conversation has moved from “AI that drafts” to “AI that does” — assistants that can read your membership database, file the renewal, and book the room. The technology is ready before most organisations’ governance is.

For years the honest case for page builders was that the native editor couldn’t match them. With WordPress 7, that case has run out — and the costs that builders were excused for are still there.

High-risk obligations land in August 2026, and most academic organisations still don’t know which of their tools are in scope. The good news: for most, the work is an afternoon of inventory, not a compliance programme.