I’m speaking, MC’ing and curating the programme for Access All Areas — an upcoming accessibility-focussed conference. Here’s all about the event, and how you can join us to learn more about accessibility, and maybe even present and share your expertise at the event!

About the conference (what, when, where)

Access All Areas (or aaa) is a new online conference—part of a series of focussed conferences created by the folks at Web Directions. This conference is focussed on accessibility for developers: understanding the different kinds of accessibility issues that our code may create, finding those issues using available auditing and testing tools, as well as techniques and technologies for addressing them.

This inclusive, remote-friendly conference will take place for the first time this year on October 25th and November 9th, featuring 12–14 in-depth talks about accessibility.

Most online conferences run just like in-person conferences–one or two jam-packed days, of live streamed presentation. aaa presentations are pre-recorded and will run over two half-days. It will run for around 4 hours each session (with a bit of downtime built-in). To cater for more audiences across different time zones, each session will be delivered 3 times, to suit your time zone wherever you are in the world, so you can participate from the comfort of your own home or office.

The programme

There will be 12–14 in-depth talks by experienced accessibility engineers, focusing on deep dives to different accessibility topics that will help you level up your day-to-day accessibility practice.

Talks will range between short 20-minute sessions and longer 40-minute sessions, akin to the format of Lazy Load—the performance-focussed event held earlier this year.

Want to speak at the conference?

If you’d like to give a talk and share your expertise at aaa, you can submit a talk idea before August 13th. The CFP will be open until then, and we would love to hear from you!

We’re looking for deep dives on all topics related to developing accessible Web sites and applications, such as:

• language and technology features (e.g. features of HTML, CSS, Browser APIs, AOM, ARIA), and
• practices, or how to use those technologies to create accessible digital experiences (e.g. accessible animations)

Since the focus of the conference is accessibility engineering, we’re not looking to focus on some areas that are commonly covered at accessibility focussed conferences. Things like the importance of accessibility, and selling accessibility into an organisation are well covered at other events. We’re also not looking to focus on automated approaches to accessibility.

We’re looking for talks that offer both focus and depth. So think less about a broad area, and more about a very specific focussed topic you cover in depth, that helps fellow front end devs address challenges when it comes to the accessibility of their sites and applications. Less “everything you need to know about ARIA” and more “ARIA Live Regions for accessible Web Applications”.

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In addition to being compensated for your talk, Web Directions will also provide you with all the equipment (camera, lighting, mic, software), direction, editing and support you need to create an amazing presentation.

If your talk gets picked, you’ll be getting an invitation from me to join the speaker line-up 🥳 as I will be curating the programme for the event… ✨

Curating, MC’ing and speaking

In addition to giving a talk and MC’ing the event, I will be putting together the programme for the inaugural edition of the event!

If you have an idea you’d like to propose, feel free to reach out to me, too!

If you know me, you may already be able to picture what the programme will be like. I want to curate the programme I want to see.

There are many topics to cover in the context of accessibility (probably too many to cover in one event!). I’d like to make sure the talks cover as many topics as possible, especially foundational concepts, technologies, and practices that you should know and can use in your day-to-day work to create more accessible Web sites and applications.

We’ve already gotten a bunch of great talk proposals. And I’ll personally be sending out invitations to some of the most seasoned accessibility folks in the community—including ones I’ve admired and learned a lot from over the years. ❤ So I’m super excited about making this happen!

Conference tickets are currently on sale, so you can register to access the event, and join us for two days of accessibility goodness in the Fall 🍁