About Anne-Mieke

Outspoken and passionate as an accessibility & possibility advocate

Anne-Mieke Bovelett.She has shoulder length blonde curly hair and wears turquoise glasses Anne-Mieke Bovelett (Anne) is a passionate, multilingual advocate for accessibility in Germany. Born in the Netherlands in 1971, she comes from a long lineage of visual artists, sculptors, musicians, engineers and nutty professors. Where her commercial genes come from remains a mystery.

She is surrounded by a carefully built international network. This includes accessibility specialists, UX/UI specialists with a focus on accessibility and inclusion, experienced web developers, app developers, data security specialists and talented content creators.

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.” 

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 began working with an open-source CMS called CMS Made Simple™. In 2010, she joined their 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 doesn’t exist, she has learned to work with several open source CMSs over the years. WordPress has become one of her all-time favourites. 

This is just a very rough summary of a career that started in the 90s. If you are really interested in the dry facts, please visit Anne’s LinkedIn profile. She worked in both large and small companies and had a long and successful career as a recruiter, which she ended when she decided to start her creative agency.

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, she is part of the organizing team of WordCamp Europe 2023 (one of the largest WordPress events in the world with 3000 participants), project manager at World Cleanup Germany, and a long-time Elementor community leader.

When she’s not working on web-related projects, 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