Schedule

No sign-up. No registration. All sessions are streamed live and publicly on the Inclusive Design 24 YouTube channel – see the entire playlist for the event.

All times shown for your local time ( UTC )

00:00 ( 00:00 UTC 17 Sep ) Claudio Luís Vera Everyone here spoke sign language

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For nearly 300 years, the entire population of Chilmark on Martha’s Vineyard spoke sign language, regardless of whether they were deaf. How did this come about?

About the speaker

Claudio is a certified accessibility professional with over 20 years’ experience in UX design and front-end development. He is an accessibility expert that handles digital experiences that include web, mobile, native, augmented reality, kiosks and gaming.

01:00 ( 01:00 UTC 17 Sep ) Veronica Lewis Why Everyone Should Design For Chiari Malformation

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Join Veronica Lewis of Veronica With Four Eyes as she shares why everyone should design for the condition Chiari Malformation, and all of the other disability areas that can benefit.

About the speaker

Veronica Lewis is the writer/blogger behind Veronica With Four Eyes, a vision impairment and assistive technology blog she started out of her dorm room at George Mason University in November 2016 that has been featured by major companies, organizations, and news outlets from all around the world. She is currently finishing up her degrees in data science and assistive technology and lives in Virginia.

02:00 ( 02:00 UTC 17 Sep ) Lainey Feingold, Lucy Greco and Stewart Hay Honey over vinegar: winning strategies for digital inclusion

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Nobody likes to be told what to do. Effective, long-lasting change comes when people want it, embrace it, and understand that change is in their best interest. We’ll look at positive, relationship-building strategies to help organizations embrace digital inclusion and keep people with disabilities front and center. Everyone knows you catch more flies with honey than vinegar. A compliance and fear driven approach to accessibility is vinegar. Join us to discuss honey: strategies like storytelling, impact marketing, and collaborative legal advocacy that can help build a culture of accessibility for employees, customers, and the public.

About the speaker

Lainey Feingold is a disability rights lawyer and an author who works primarily with the blind community on technology, digital, and information access issues.

Lucy Greco is a Web Accessibility Evangelist who has been blind since birth and leads the Electronic Accessibility Committee (EAC) at UC Berkeley.

Stewart Hay is the Managing Director and co-founder of Intopia, a social enterprise focused on creating an inclusive digital world.

03:00 ( 03:00 UTC 17 Sep ) Michele A. Williams and Synge Tyson Responsive Design vs. Magnification: Designing for Users With Low Vision

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Designers often account for mobile-friendly responsiveness, achieved through resizing browser windows. This is extremely beneficial for users with low vision because increased text size is an important adjustment. However, designers are less familiar with magnification (akin to using a magnifying glass across a screen) and how the widely used tool differs greatly from responsive design.

This session aims to improve accessibility for users with low vision by demonstrating the common techniques used on the Web and proposing design best practices.

About the speaker

Dr. Michele A. Williams is owner of M.A.W. Consulting, LLC – Making Accessibility Work. She has 15 years of academic and industrial experience in UX, accessibility, and technology including training, UX design and research with people with disabilities, and code remediation for building WCAG-compliant technology. Along with industry project contributions, her academic research and designs have resulted in numerous cited publications, international presentations, and a patent application for an inclusive wearable technology.

Ms. Synge Tyson, MA, OMS, CPACC is a researcher, rehabilitation specialist, and Certified Professional in Accessibility Core Competencies (CPACC). She holds six degrees, and has held positions within federal government, industry, and nonprofit. As research faculty at Georgia Tech, she conducted policy development research regarding human interaction with wireless communication technologies. She has presented at numerous local, state, and international conferences and works to broaden accessibility and inclusion across various industries.

04:00 ( 04:00 UTC 17 Sep ) Rachel Rodney Let's Inclusify

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Anyone can make experiences more inclusive - from designing packaging to be globally appropriate, to workplace environments, to devices that adapt for the user ... as opposed to the user adapting to the device. And there are so many communities within “marginalized communities” that need to be considered, in terms of not only accessibility, but all of the intersections that create compounded disparities which exclude people from experiences.

Culturalization is a rapidly growing need as the world’s geographical barriers are broken down by technology. Sexism continues to persist in the way people value each other’s work and worth. The accessibility of products is often reliant on how much a company cares to align to legal requirements, as opposed to the need of consumers.

So how can we create more inclusive societal norms?

By developing an inclusive mind which identifies exclusive practice and works to establish new inclusive ways of making. This talk will cover stories from different communities that contributed to exclusion, and how people inclusify them.

About the speaker

Rachel is pursuing a degree in Human Centered Design and Engineering at the University of Washington. She has published a book, Our Exclusive Society in July 2020, which stemmed from her interests in learning more about Inclusive Design, and how 'makers' (anyone who is creating things to be used by people - so designers, educators, programmers, etc) can have a more inclusive mindset in their work.

05:00 ( 05:00 UTC 17 Sep ) Gian Wild Mobile accessibility: testing mobile sites and native apps for accessibility

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Accessibility is important to all – not everyone using your mobile app, device or wearable will be fully functioning: either because they have a disability or they are simply engaged elsewhere. Gian Wild, Chair of the Native App and Mobile Site Committees talks about the things that are essential to avoid when designing mobile apps, devices and wearables to ensure that everyone can use them. She talks about specific mobile accessibility features: pinch zoom, native screen readers, haptic keyboard etc, and system accessibility settings: font size, screen rotation, high contrast etc. The Native App and Mobile Site Testing Guidelines are provided.

About the speaker

Gian Wild is the CEO of AccessibilityOz, with offices in the United States, Europe and Australia. She has worked in accessibility industry since 1998, when she worked on the very first Australian accessible web site. Her major achievements include: six years’ active membership in the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group contributing to WCAG2; her speech on the importance of web accessibility at the United Nations Conference of State Parties in 2015; and the release of the ICT Mobile Site Accessibility Testing Guidelines as the Mobile Sub-Committee Chair of the ICT Accessibility Testing Symposium. In 2019 Gian won the inaugural Accessibility Person of the Year. Gian speaks at conferences in Australia, US, Canada, South America and Europe.

06:00 ( 06:00 UTC 17 Sep ) Joshue O Connor XR Accessibility: The art of the possible

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As a platform, XR or virtual and immersive environments, augmented or mixed reality is becoming more stable and commonplace. The leveraging of existing hardware means it may become ubiquitous. What does this technology mean for people with disabilities?

About the speaker

Joshue O Connor is emerging web technology specialist with the W3C/Web Accessibility Initiative. He is ex co-chair of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines working group as well as ex Head of Accessibility (Interim) for Government Digital Services (GDS) in the UK. He was the first in Ireland to graduate with an MSc in Assistive Technology and Universal Design.

He’s a tech skeptic, has written a couple of books, one of which isn’t bad - likes to cook Indian vegetarian food, learn Irish trad tunes in tricky tunings, do the occasional Jazz noodle on the guitar - and rocks out as ‘A Bit Wonky’.

07:00 ( 07:00 UTC 17 Sep ) Sarah Higley Debugging broken accessibility

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Accessibility testing can show you what bugs you have, but not why they occurred or how to fix them. Sometimes this is simple: if an image is missing alt text, you add an alt attribute. Other times you may find yourself with 50 open browser tabs and lacking a few handfuls of hair.

Let's make that process a little easier by looking at tools and tricks for debugging everything from combobox semantics to live regions. Then we'll follow the root causes a little further to look at where in today's web ecosystem they really originate from.

About the speaker

Sarah Higley is a web developer who works on accessibility at Microsoft. She has been convincing people to give her money in exchange for code since 2011, and is happiest when working on weird web components. She is always up for listening to or participating in rants about accessibility, the importance of front-end skills, and diversity in tech.

08:00 ( 08:00 UTC 17 Sep ) Russ Weakley What are accessible names and why should you care?

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This presentation will look at accessible names, how they are exposed in the browsers accessibility tree, and their importance to assistive technologies. There will be a deep dive into simple examples, advanced examples using ARIA, and an overview of the W3C's Accessible Name and Description Computation.

About the speaker

Russ Weakley is an author, speaker, and CSS expert, with a detailed knowledge of web design and development. Russ runs the Web Standards Group and has produced a series of widely acclaimed online tutorials on CSS, Responsive Web Design and web development.

09:00 ( 09:00 UTC 17 Sep ) Simon Hayhoe Participatory Co-Design, Grounded Methodology and the Development of Post-Inclusion

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The presentation discusses two post-inclusive arts projects. These projects use participatory co-design to create artworks and technology, and grounded methodology as a means of developing learning and evaluation. The first project is a community education project on flooding in Bath, UK, and features co-created interactive installations, music and sculptures. The second project is a community design project, which features the development of co-designed breakdance choreography, performance and a multi-sensory dance beat technology in Yorkshire, UK.

About the speaker

Simon is a Reader in Education at the University of Bath, UK. He is also a Centre Associate in the Centre for the Philosophy of Natural and Social Science, London School of Economics, an Associate of the Scottish Sensory Centre, University of Edinburgh and Temporary Advisor to the World Health Organisation. Simon is currently co-editor of the Routledge book series, Qualitative and Visual Methodologies in Educational Research. He has also won several awards and fellowships, including a Fulbright All Disciplines Scholar's Award and fellowships of the British Computer Society and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, USA).

10:00 ( 10:00 UTC 17 Sep ) Max Böck Emergency Website Kit

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In cases of emergency, many organizations need a quick way to publish critical information. But existing (CMS) websites are often unable to handle sudden spikes in traffic and can lack the necessary focus on performance and accessibility.

This talk outlines an attempt to create a template for emergency websites that are designed to be extremely resilient, highly inclusive and fast to get off the ground. It's about making a website with the sole purpose of getting important information to as many people as possible.

About the speaker

Max is a front-end developer based in Vienna, Austria. He has been building on the web for the last 15 years, focused on creating engaging, accessible & performant interfaces. He’s a big fan of trash movies, HTML and the IndieWeb.

11:00 ( 11:00 UTC 17 Sep ) Chad Gowler Simulation exercises through the lens of play

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This talk will examine simulation or "empathy" exercises through the lens of game studies. Play is an important part of how we build understanding of the word, and serious games are used to promote empathy and engagement with all kinds of difficult topics. Can treating simulation exercises as play improve their impact?

About the speaker

Chad Gowler is an accessibility consultant working for a government department based in Sheffield. They specialise in diversity and inclusion especially around mental health and LGBTQ+ issues. In their spare time, they are in various usergroups talking about gender, accessibility, mental health and gaming for social good, or chilling out on their Animal Crossing island.

12:00 ( 12:00 UTC 17 Sep ) Manuel Matuzović Writing even more CSS with Accessibility in Mind

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What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of “CSS and accessibility”? Maybe text size, color contrast, or DOM order. Important topics, without question, but there’s a lot more to consider when writing inclusive CSS. This talk aims to help you create better interfaces by adapting to your users’ needs. You’ll learn how to debug and test with CSS, how attribute selectors can improve accessibility, and when CSS affects the semantics of your HTML.

About the speaker

Manuel is a front-end developer from Vienna, specialized in HTML, CSS, accessibility, and performance. He likes to write about these topics and talk at meetups and conferences. He’s organizer of the webclerks conference in Vienna, and he maintains htmhell.dev and frontendbookmarks.com.

13:00 ( 13:00 UTC 17 Sep ) Charlie Turrell and Gareth Ford Williams Why have a team when you can have an army?

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Many organisations have subject groups, networks and guilds. These all have similar objectives in that they develop and embed best practices into an organisation.

The BBC has an Accessibility Champions Network that is nearly 10 years old. It has gone through several changes, has grown to over 200 members and is about to embark on a new stage in its evolution.

Gareth will be talking about why accessibility networks are so important to every organisation. Charlie, the network’s new manager, will focus on how networks have to develop a culture.

About the speaker

Charlie Turrell has recently joined the Accessibility team at the BBC and has taken over the management of their Accessibility Champions Network. Charlie has a varied background, including working with young people with additional needs. Charlie is looking to evolve the network using a more people centred approach.

Gareth sits on several BBC internal management groups including: the diversity groups for the BBC North and BBC Future Media Divisions, Future Media’s Senior Leadership Team and the Creative Leadership team, as well as pan-BBC groups for Accessibility. Gareth also represents the BBC at ATVOD (the Authority for Television and Video On Demand) as well as at public speaking events such as conferences, symposiums and forums.

14:00 ( 14:00 UTC 17 Sep ) Gareth Ford Williams The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers

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ADHD affects between 10% and 20% of all children, but it is also a lifelong condition? This presentation is a personal perspective of what ADHD is, why it exists and what the challenges are?

About the speaker

In 2005 Gareth founded the BBC’s Digital Accessibility Team. Over the course of the first 3 years the Accessibility Team worked as an integral part of iPlayer’s core Product Team ensuring BBC iPlayer V1.0 launched as an accessible product in 2008.

By 2011 he was heading-up both the User Research and Accessibility teams. Two of the outcomes were the establishment of the champions Network in 2019 and in 2012 The BBC launched its Mobile Accessibility Guidelines.

15:00 ( 15:00 UTC 17 Sep ) Eriol Fox UX research and ethnographic design for humanitarian technology

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Eriol has been working in the non-profit, humanitarian technology sector for the past two years immersed in how to build technology products and services that empower and give access to people in the global south or ‘developing countries’ often around difficult topics like Genocide, Democracy, gender-based violence and in difficult circumstances such as informal settlements (slums) and areas where radicalisation is high. This is a summary of how to approach difficult topics when researching these areas or these countries along with some tips for those looking to work or learn more about how to conduct UX research in these places.

About the speaker

Eriol is Lead designer at the Open Food Network working on an ethical, open-source food supply chain product. From research, ideation through to visual execution. They focus on user-centred design and research that is inclusive of marginalised folks by default. With 10 years of experience as a professional designer, Eriol has worked in-house at large corporates that have dealt in electronics, insurance, risk management, housing, parental tech and crisis response. They have worked for non-profits and community groups and is actively involved in various non-profits from environmental the arts to LGBTQ+ issues. They are part of the core team at opensourcedesign.net advocating for designers contributing to and collaborating on open-source software. Eriol is a queer, non-binary, trans person who uses they/them pronouns.

16:00 ( 16:00 UTC 17 Sep ) Bruce Lawson Whose web is it anyway?

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Who decides web standards? Who decides what gets implemented in browsers? Who does your browser work for? And, most importantly, why did Vladimir Putin's communist nipples get me banned from Facebook last week?

About the speaker

As well as being a highly-regarded fashion blogger and one of the editors of the W3C’s HTML5.3 specification, Bruce co-wrote Introducing HTML5 and was on the committee drafting the British Standard for commissioning accessible websites. Previously, he’s been a front-end tech lead for a large UK legal website, a tutor to a princess’ daughter in Thailand, a movie extra in Mumbai, a tarot card reader in Istanbul and a musician.

17:00 ( 17:00 UTC 17 Sep ) Njoki Kamau Bias in Artificial Intelligence

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Many Artificial Intelligence systems are susceptible to use biased algorithm in many different scenarios. Due to this, systems find themselves outputting unknowingly discriminatory information against particular races; this can lead to group profiling and implicit biases. This worrisome gap lies in the algorithmic model and data. Before we can move forward any further with AI, we need to retrain and master these broken systems.

About the speaker

Njoki Kamau is a UX/UI Designer in Maryland, USA. With a background in psychology, she understands the motivations users have and how important honing empathy can be in the design process. She enjoys thinking inclusively, especially in an intersectional fashion, and finds comfort in tackling abstract problems to produce novel solutions. Njoki believes that technology is always transforming and advancing and designers need to be at the forefront in order to help make people's lives a bit easier.

18:00 ( 18:00 UTC 17 Sep ) Marcelo Sales Accessibility Toolkit: Understanding WCAG once and for all!

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Note: this session will be presented in Brazilian Portuguese.

If you work with digital projects, you have probably already received some kind of request to make your content accessible. And from that moment on, questions like "where do I start?" You will invariably fall into some content talking about WCAG and from there new doubts arise, mainly due to the amount of information presented. Realizing this difficulty in practical applications, such as workshops, I created a toolkit to facilitate the understanding, learning and application of WCAG in its projects.

About the speaker

Designer, developing digital products for 20 years. Today I work in the Design Ops team at Itaú (the largest private sector bank in Brazil) with a focus on UX and Accessibility. Creator of WCAG Guide. Invited professor of Accessibility in courses at ESPM and Belas Artes and Accessibility Instructor at Mergo UX (recognized institutions in Brazil). Member of the W3C Brasil Web Accessibility Specialists Group.

19:00 ( 19:00 UTC 17 Sep ) Kiran Kaja Designing digital assistants for those who need it most

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The fact that accessibility features benefit everyone and not just people with disabilities is a long understood concept within the accessibility profession. This is much more evident in some of the newer technologies such as digital assistants where a natural and intuitive multi-modal interface to use technology to find information and get things done is helping users with disabilities as well as everyone else because at the end of the day, we are all trying to accomplish similar tasks. Learn about how we are designing features for users with disabilities in the Google Assistant for example that benefit users with disabilities as well as everyone else.

About the speaker

Kiran leads a diverse Accessibility program team for Search, Assistant and news at Google, ensuring that these products are helpful for everyone including users with disabilities. Kiran brings a unique perspective to disability, accessibility and inclusion due to his background in working in corporate and non-profit sectors and in a number of countries around the world.

20:00 ( 20:00 UTC 17 Sep ) Crystal Preston-Watson Guerilla Accessibility Testing Techniques

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Learn how to conduct stealthy testing that will disrupt the notion that accessibility is expendable while not being disruptive to your organization’s development process.

About the speaker

Crystal Preston-Watson is a quality engineer who focuses on accessibility at Salesforce. She has a decade of experience working with online media and software companies throughout North America.

21:00 ( 21:00 UTC 17 Sep ) Sarah Brodwall Inclusive Color: from Photons and Physiology to Psychology and Philosophy

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Inclusive color is about so much more than contrast. Understanding color on a deeper level, from the interplay of physics and physiology to psychological and cultural factors, lets us go beyond accessibility requirements and standards to provide a pleasant user experience for as many people as possible.

This talk is relevant for anyone who uses color in their work, including designers of built environments, print, and web, in addition to developers, testers, and content creators.

About the speaker

Sarah works as the Principal Advisor and Competence Manager for Universal Design at the Norwegian Health Network, which develops digital services that enable Norway's residents to communicate with healthcare providers and take control over their own health. She has a background in linguistics and cognitive psychology and over 20 years' experience with front-end web development and user experience design, and is an IAAP Certified Professional in Web Accessibility (CPWA). She particularly enjoys teaching others about universal design via hands-on workshops and geeking out about the minutiae of semantic HTML.

22:00 ( 22:00 UTC 17 Sep ) Natalie Patrice Tucker and Lori Samuels Care & Feeding of Accessibility Professionals

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Connecting with the wisdom of "accessibility eldering" to encourage, support and build leadership within our community of practice and for anyone committed to inclusive design

As an accessibility professional, who can you turn to when you’re feeling stressed or burned out? Where do you go for inspiration and guidance? Who can you reach out to when you just need to vent? How can you avoid pitfalls and navigate obstacles along your accessibility journey? Two senior accessibility professionals will share updates about the Digital Accessibility Eldering Project’s mentoring initiative as a way of passing wisdom along, and pulling people up.

About the speaker

Natalie Patrice Tucker has nearly two decades of experience building the accessible web. Committed to a web that works for everyone, she spends her days (and far too many nights and weekends) serving as a subject matter expert in the area of web accessibility and training an army of developers and stakeholders to carry the charge.

Lori Samuels is the Accessibility Director at NBCUniversal. She leads strategic accessibility programs to institute best practices in inclusive design, provide training for product teams, drive cultural maturity in disability inclusion, and fortify executive sponsorship.

23:00 ( 23:00 UTC 17 Sep ) Billy Gregory You, Ex. Breaking up with bad design

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Why do we keep going back to the same bad designs? Why are we hung up on something that used to make sense but doesn’t anymore? Why don’t we listen when people say we can do better? Are we incapable of doing better? Maybe this just feels safer? Or are we … lazy?

Whether it’s been months or years, it’s always time to re-evaluate your relationship with design. Weed out what’s not good for us, figure out what’s only good for the short term, and break up with bad design once and for all.

About the speaker

Billy Gregory is one of the driving forces behind the #A11yTO events (#a11yTO Conf, meetups, #a11yTO Gaming, #a11yIRL, #a11yTO Camp).

Before #a11yTO, and after failing to become a rock star, Billy focused his attention on front-end development. It was during this time that he discovered his true love of the internet, and his wish that everyone be able to use it.

Billy never shuts up about SUX (Some User Experience), which happens when design stops short of including all users.

He is still not a rock star.

00:00 ( 00:00 UTC 18 Sep ) The after party

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Your hosts will discuss their favourite webinars from the last 24 hours, and might have a drink or two!