People-first

Creating a Better Web Through Accessible Design Systems

Evolving Web and Exygy are presenting a webinar on accessible design systems. The webinar will focus on how design systems underpinned by accessibility principles are invaluable for embedding accessibility into projects from the ground up, as well as strategies for building such design systems. Aimed at designers, developers, site builders and web managers, it will include examples from the two teams and a Q&A session.

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Redesigning for Cognitive Ease

Alyssa Panetta (she/her)

After all the WCAG standards are met, how accessible is your site for users with cognitive disabilities? How can you tell? What does that mean? Where would you even start?

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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. 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.

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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!

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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.

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