Accessible Presentations

Accessible presentations are important because they allow everyone, regardless of disability, to participate and benefit from the presented information. Making presentations accessible is an important step towards making our presentations more inclusive and accessible to everyone.

In this talk, we'll cover inclusive design tips based on established practices, such as using clear and concise language, using large fonts and high-contrast colors, and avoiding the use of too much text on each slide.

Accessible presentations are important because they allow everyone, regardless of disability, to participate and benefit from the presented information. Making presentations accessible is an important step towards making our presentations more inclusive and accessible to everyone.

Beyond Alt Descriptions: Authoring Accessible Content

Inclusive content writing is more than providing atl descriptions for images and transcripts for videos. It's authoring material that is considerate, respectful, and accessible to a diverse audience, regardless of their background, identity, abilities, and learning styles. Inclusive content writing ensures everyone can engage with and understand the presented content. Attendees will gain a better understanding of how people with various neurological disabilities perceive content and how to apply the applicable WCAG 2.2 Success Criteria. This talk also covers a few best practices for authoring inclusive content to improve the user's experience. We will also dive into modern technology, such as AI, to assist with the writing process.

Inclusive content writing is more than providing alt descriptions for images and transcripts for videos. It's authoring material that is considerate, respectful, and accessible to a diverse audience, regardless of their background, identity, abilities, and learning styles.

Accessibility Auditing: Getting Started with Accessibility

This workshop is for people who are just starting or want to get started learning accessibility and how to audit. Or for the people who are in Accessibility who want a refresher or are looking to change their workflows.

The overall points an attendee should take away and learn from this workshop are:

- Differences between auditing websites and mobile apps
- What to look for when auditing
- The WCAG guidelines and best practices
- Tools to use and how to use them
- Differences between automated and manual testing
- Documentation of audits and scoring them for clients
- Using the data to make sites more accessible
- Workflows and toolkits that make for efficient auditing.

By the time the workshop has ended, the attendee should be able to go out and audit websites for accessibility.

Accessibility as a Process

Your project isn't ADA compliant, now what? Where do you even begin to apply the information in the WCAG? This talk will help explain the sections of the WCAG and how to include accessibility in your project plans.

The WCAG provides a great deal of information to help companies build accessible projects on the web. But it's not uncommon for those who try to navigate its content to become overwhelmed. This can lead to task paralysis, making it difficult to take the next steps to fix the issues with your project. This talk will highlight a few common accessibility issues and how to use the various sections of the WCAG and RACI to help establish a way forward. Allowing you to move forward with building a better, more inclusive product.

Your project isn't ADA compliant, now what? Where do you even begin to apply the information in the WCAG? This talk will help explain the sections of the WCAG and how to include accessibility your project plans.

Addressing Challenges and Embracing Neurodiversity

This research-based talk will look at Long COVID and how it affects the accessible user experience, bring awareness to cognitive disabilities and what we as content creators can do to make our applications more accessible. Listeners will gain an understanding of various barriers and challenges that people with cognitive disabilities face on a daily basis when interacting with software products. In addition, they will learn how to build more inclusive products.

This research-based talk will look at Long COVID and how it affects the accessible user experience and how we as software developers can improve our products.

The Four Principles of Accessibility

While many in the dev community are aware of inclusive practices, the reasons are still not understood. My talk walks the listener through the WCAG 2.2 and explains how the four principles, collectively referred to as POUR, apply to product design and development. These four principles specifically target areas where users have trouble accessing digital content. The goal is to help product teams understand how to think about and approach accessibility so they can build products that enable independence.

Learn about the four principles of accessibility and how to they are key to building inclusive products. The goal is to help product teams understand how to think about and approach accessibility so they can build products that enable independence.

Accessible Components

Within the WCAG 2.2, web-accessible content is broken into four principles collectively referred to as POUR. This acronym stands for Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust. With POUR as the foundation, this talk will provide guidance for understanding how to think and approach building accessible components.

With WCAG 2.2 as the foundation, this talk will provide guidance for understanding how to think and approach building accessible components.

Keyboard traps and how to escape them

Part of my Empathy Series: Keyboard traps are instances where keyboard users encounter areas of an app or website where they can't move forward in the process. Effectively, they are blocked due to the keyboard actions being "trapped" on a particular element. In this talk, I will discuss common causes of keyboard traps and how to fix them.

Keyboard traps are instances where keyboard users encounter areas of an app or website where they can't move forward. In this talk, I will discuss common causes of keyboard traps and how to fix them.

Getting started with screen readers

Part of my Empathy Series: Screen readers are used by many people with and without disabilities. As developers, screen readers are an important tool because they help us manually test the accessible support of our web-based content in addition to providing insight into how users perceive our content. In this discussion, we will cover the most popular screen readers, their settings and how to get started with them.

Screen readers are used by many people with and without disabilities. In this discussion, we will cover the most popular screen readers, their settings and how to get started with them.

Seeing Eye to Eye: Design that Benefits Us All

While color contrast is a valid concern, it's not the only design aspect affecting the user experience. This talk will dive into the design process to shine some light on various friction points that create barriers for users and practical solutions on how to fix them.

By learning how to apply the tools we as designers already use, we will better understand how unconscious bias drives design decisions giving us the confidence to address blind spots early.

Improving Accessibility Through Design Systems

Imagine building your app with accessibility in mind right from the very start, like laying the foundation with bricks. An accessible design system can act as this foundation.

It provides a toolbox with clear instructions, core principles, and ready-made components. By prioritizing accessibility from the start, these systems promote the reusability of inclusive design patterns and ensure consistent, well-tested components. This, in turn, leads to a smoother development process and a more inclusive user experience for all.

The Role of Cognitive, Emotional, and Compassionate Empathy in Product Design

This journey will take an honest look at the daily struggles of being an accessibility professional in an industry that often views accessibility as an afterthought. But it's not all doom and gloom. There is hope. Drawing upon personal experiences, Homer will explore three types of empathy and how they build upon each other to form a foundation for building more inclusive applications.