Advocacy

A11y Talks Team

Have you ever wondered how the A11yTalks team, month after month, delivers accessible online events? Our team is excited to let you see behind-the-scenes on how we prepare, perform, and produce high quality and meaningful conversations around digital accessibility.

Read more about Behind the Stream - How A11yTalks Creates Accessible Virtual Events →

Matthew Saunders (he/him)

Matthew knew from a young age that he was different. Though he didn't know why. It wasn't until he was an adult and really dug into his own daughter's special needs, that he was able to begin a journey of self discovery. We'll talk about his lived experience with Autism, Attention Deficit Disorder, and Dyslexia.

Read more about The Human Side of Neurodivergence - A Technologist's Journey →

Sia Magadan (she/ella) & Val Neumark (she/they)

This session will share the highlights and ‘warts’ of our journey to shifting our organizational culture. We will highlight the Liberatory Design Framework and Mindsets, as well as some of the other techniques we use to embody our values and put them into action. Our values are not only forward facing—meaning the code of conduct for clients; but these same values also hold us accountable internally, as an organization that not just uses the words but embodies the practice—making continual space to notice and reflect upon how power, identity and oppression show up in varying contexts of our organization and work. Join us as we discuss the steps we’ve taken to hold ourselves and each other accountable with grace.

Read more about Designing 'With' & Not 'For,' rootid's Culture Shifting Process →

Alex Tait (she/her)

Interfaces are doing too much - we've gone from cognitive overload to cognitive overlords. There is so much drive in tech to increase engagement that websites and software platforms have become intrusive and annoying at best, and dangerous at worst. As an accessibility "consigliere", I come across issues every day that could be "fixed", but often a better choice is to remove or change the pattern to minimize cognitive overload. Let's take a look at some common interface patterns and explore why they exist, if they are accomplishing their intended purpose, and how we might reconsider them and slay the cognitive overlords!

Read more about Cognitive Overlords →

Todd Libby (he/him)

Accessibility is often overlooked or bolted on to the end of a project from the experiences in my career in web development and design. The case for accessibility is something we as people who create and build things for the web should be implementing and advocating for disabled users from the inception of a project to the release or handoff and beyond.

Read more about Making a strong case for accessibility →