People-first

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.

This is a digital accessibility success story that started on Twitter where a screen reader user reported a content barrier on a COVID-19 website. The accessibility process to remove the barrier illustrates the need for important conversations, a good faith effort, and a roadmap for continuous improvement. Based on the blog article “A Little Bird Told Me.”

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.

In discussions about accessibility and diversity, our thoughts tend to jump to ARIA links, screen readers, and people of different ethnicities. While these are key aspects to both topics, this talk will push your thinking to considerations beyond accessibility and diversity basics.

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?

In this panel, we’ll dig into people’s misconceptions about the difficulty of accessibility as well as some of the ways that accessibility is genuinely difficult. Join the discussion with Aisha Blake, Kathleen McMahon, Scott O’Hara, Jared Smith, & Marcy Sutton with Caitlin Cashin as host.

A high incidence of dyslexic traits are found in computer programmers. These special traits and abilities are commonly depicted as disabilities. In the same vein, one-fifth of the estimated global population possesses disabilities. Join me as we deploy the narratives that exist at the intersection of ability and access. Let’s steer the strengths, park the misconceptions, and drive hacks meant to empower programmers who exhibit special traits and abilities.