Business

November 2022

Designing 'With' & Not 'For,' rootid's Culture Shifting Process

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.

October 2022

Cognitive Overlords

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!

September 2022

Making a strong case for accessibility

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.

March 2022

From Disabled Veteran to Full-Stack Drupal Developer

Edmund Dunn
he/him

As of August 2020, there are over 4.7 million disabled veterans in the United States. They are all dealing with a variety of disabilities connected to their time in the service. To say this is an under-represented group is an understatement. With the right help, these veterans can transition into the tech industry which is chronically short of developers of all stripes.

February 2022

Introducing ARRM: Assigning Ownership to Get Things Done

Jen Chadwick, Bill Tyler, Seán Kelly

The Accessibility Roles and Responsibilities Mapping (ARRM) Methodology is a proposed W3C resource through the Education and Outreach Working Group (EOWG). It’s also been described as a “gift to digital teams” as they start to shift left and implement accessibility efforts earlier in their processes. The ARRM is a highly effective tool when you’re identifying what tasks need to be done – the next important question after “how” and “when” is “who”. It’s a flexible and adaptive framework that can be applied at an organizational level or project level - assigning ownership of those tasks in a collaborative team exercise, where they also find solutions. The outcomes are team collaboration, education, clarity, ownership, and finally empowerment.

October 2021

Bridging the A11y Gap: Mental Health & the Next Generation

Albert Kim
he/him

Two of the biggest gaps in digital accessibility include lack of accessibility guidelines around mental health and how to bridge the knowledge divide between advocacy and professional. Albert Kim, the founder of Accessibility NextGen and a W3C invited expert on mental health, will be discussing his digital accessibility journey and the role Accessibility NextGen is playing to help people in the early stages of their accessibility journeys learn and grow together.

July 2021

The Fatal Flaw of Overlays

Shell Little

Overlays are technologies implemented on websites with the aim of increasing accessibility. Even if these overlays could do as they claim, they would still have a fundamental flaw. You can never out code bad design. During this talk let's discuss how overlays will never be the answer and the importance of accessible, inclusive, and usable designs.

December 2020

Accessible Marketing Practices

Donna Bungard

Adopting an accessible marketing strategy can save time and money but what does that look like? In this session, we’ll talk through practical ways to incorporate accessibility into the marketing practices you’re already doing.

January 2020

Why Dyslexic Narratives Matter in Tech

Jeannette Washington

There has never been a better time to consider how your skills can be harnessed within the tech industry. The tech jobs of tomorrow require your narrative. After all, technology will only be as good as the people that it does the least for.

Join in this month while we discuss Jeannette Washington’s new book, Technical Difficulties: Why Dyslexic Narratives Matter In Tech.

October 2019

Accessibility in the Modern Digital Agency

Sara Tabor

Digital agencies are often the source for companies (large and small) to create integrated and marketable products and platforms. In Sara's time at Code and Theory, she has seen an accessibility awakening with not internally but also with clients. Accessibility deliverables are a clear value-add proposition to our clients, including creative technology and technical strategy integrations. Sara will be discussing how she has built an actionable awareness over multiple teams about accessible deliverables - from answering RFPs through QA and final launch. Sara will also be discussing the range of needs her clients are requesting when they’re building their digital products. Finally, Sara will be discussing current needs within the agency regarding scaling skillsets, capacity planning, and follow-the-sun development/test strategy.

Business

Sia Magadanshe/ella

Val Neumarkshe/they

Alex Taitshe/her

Todd Libbyhe/him

Edmund Dunnhe/him