Beginners

Conversations about money and accessibility are frequently centered on the expenses of implementing accessibility in digital products and applications. Missing from these conversations are the economic realities faced by disabled people and the price of assistive technology. In this talk, we will look into the repercussions of overlooking the reality that individual finances play in digital accessibility.

Accessibility work is complex. It’s easy to get overwhelmed when you’re first starting out – especially if you don’t have access to an accessibility specialist on your team or in your organization. Devon will go through common misconceptions about digital accessibility work and introduce ways to think about disability, assistive technology, and a more holistic approach to accessibility.

Mike wanted to do some basic modeling for accessibility and realized the need to simplify things. This is how the A11yAxiom project got started on Twitter. He wanted to define some essential truths in order to help people get a better sense of how to approach digital accessibility. This session will cover some of those approaches, and conclude with a Q&A at the end to see if we can’t make them better.

When we talk about accessibility, we talk a lot about the technical bits, the alphabet soup - WCAG, AAA, WAI-ARIA, Screen readers. But what we don't often talk about is what it really means to be accessible - how do we ensure we are including everyone and empowering every user in every scenario to use our sites, products, and devices? Are we including trans folks? Parents? The chronically ill? People with limited literacy? The injured?