People-first

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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Representation Creates Reality

Keely Cat-Wells (she/her) & Dan Edge (he/him)

Together we’ll discuss disability representation within the entertainment, media & advertising industries and how that affects our society. They will discuss the social model of disability, intersectionality and encourage turning any doubts into questions.

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How to create and maintain healthy communities: The importance of psychological safety

Von R. Eaton (he/him)

We use the term "community" often, but what is the broader implication and importance of this word? In sociology, a community is a group who follows a social structure within a society, bound by a sense of belonging sustained across time and space. The often unspoken element of community is power dynamics: both individual and collective. This session will engage attendees on the key components of creating and sustaining healthy communities.

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How to make / improvise your own accessibility and adaptive devices and mods. Crash Course.

Aaron Esau (he/him)

This is a crash course in how to help you as a disabled person (or anyone) to improve accessibility. We will discuss figuring out what the problem is, sift through possible solutions and how to test and iterate to a working solution for the user.

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