Access-byDesign

I am going to be a TedX Speaker!

I am so excited to announce that I am going to be speaking at TedX Lukely Brook on Wednesday March 2nd 2022! You may be unsurprised that learn that I am speaking about a subject closest to my heart: Website Accessibility for Disabled People!

I have spent 15 years talking about this; at meetings, events, media interviews and through rather a lot of online articles. I will always continue to do this, of course, however, I do feel extremely honoured to be invited to present in the TedX format.
The overall theme for the event is “If not now, when?” and never has then been more applicable to website accessibility than now.

As with other TedX events, it will be presented to a live audience and simultaneously live-streamed and be available on TedX.com afterwards.
In case you are wondering why “If not now, when?” is particularly appropriate for this subject, well, detailed guidelines on how to make your website have been around since 1999. We are now in 2021 and yet most people have never even heard of the idea of a website being accessible or otherwise for a disabled person!

My lifelong wish is to Change the World – One Website at a Time.
Perhaps the TedX platform will enable me to change one or two more.

Speakers Appearing at TEDxLukelyBrook - 2nd March 2022 A motivational call to action, to prompt those attending and ‘touched’ by this TEDx event to take immediate action, on aspects of their business and personal life that they inevitably know they will have to undertake at some time, but so often delay or procrastinate upon.

“Blind people do not use the internet. How could they, they cannot see the screen.”

I was having a conversation with a very nice lady last week. We had met at an online networking event and were having a follow-up chat over Zoom. She had been struck by some of the things I had been saying and it had got her thinking.

She had previously been working as a health and safety officer for a company for 20 years, so she would have a much greater awareness than most people about the wellbeing of people and having an awareness of their needs.

I must admit that I rarely am at a loss for words, but this was one of those occasions.

Please note, I am not mocking her or criticising her in any way. She was obviously a caring and compassionate person and genuinely wanted to know more about accessibility and websites.

I was very happy to explain some of the basics: how blind people could use a screen-reader that would describe audibly the website there were on, telling them the links to other pages that were available, explaining any images on there and so on. They could also have a keyboard that was easier for them to use.

She is not the first person I have spoken to who, despite having a good understanding of welfare and inclusivity in the real world, was not aware that the same rules apply on the Web.

The guidelines regarding website accessibility for disabled people have been around since 1999.

Yes, that is correct. 22 years ago.

I have been passionate about promoting website accessibility for disabled since we first started building accessible websites, back in 2006.

Frankly, it has been a pretty lonely road.

Until lockdown.

Since then, I have had the privilege of meeting many other like-minded individuals online and I want to take this opportunity to publicly say thank you to them. The road is not quite so lonely.

However, there is much work to do and much awareness to be raised!

I run a free monthly workshop on website accessibility and, if you would like to find out more about this, please come along. https://zcu.io/CBpc

If you are interested in having an accessibility audit of your website, why not book yourself in for a chat? https://zcu.io/czy6