People-first

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.

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.

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.

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.

Do all deaf people know how to read lips? Know sign language? Can they drive? There are many misconceptions about deaf and hard of hearing people. Meryl will set the record straight on common misconceptions. Come to this A11yTalks session to get the facts about deaf and HoH people to enrich your accessibility and inclusion efforts.

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.

Father Hen's House is a newly started Youtube series project where Father Hen addresses topics through the lens of disability, sexuality, & gender mainly.

The videos are broken into small 3-part series that cover a topic through the different lenses, often with the help of guest speakers. The goal of the project is to provide a digital resource to answer questions that people may be afraid to ask. Father Hen will go over the project's inspiration and where the project is going.

 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.