Vasilis’ nerd blog presents

An accessibility meetup

A while ago the kind people of the Idea11y meetup group contacted me to see if we, at the CMD school of digital design in Amsterdam, were interested in co-organising an accessibility meetup. Of course we are. Such a meetup is perfect for our students. For instance for the students who follow the web design & development minor. It’s a great opportunity to meet people from the field in an informal manner, and to hear different stories about accessibility in practice. We do give our students assignments where accessibility is a main consideration, but for our students these are still just assignments. It’s good to meet people who actually put things in practice. But this meetup is not just good for my students, it’s good for you as well. So feel free to join us.

We invited two accessibility experts to each give a talk. Erik Kroes, a very experienced accessibility expert, will give a talk called Practical fixes for common WCAG failures. An interactive session where he will share his extensive knowledge about working with accessibility in large organisations like ING, IKEA, WeTransfer and VodafoneZiggo. The second speaker is Nienke de Keijzer, a former CMD student, who recently graduated with a project for the Amsterdam public transport operator, GVB. She redesigned their app with a focus on accessibility. She involved all kinds of people in the process, from blind travellers to bus drivers. All her findings will be implemented in the app, and they offered her a job as a UX designer. It’s going to be her first appearance as a public speaker. You don’t want to miss this.

The meetup is on Wednesday the 16th of April on the third floor of the Theo Thijssen building, and it starts at 16:00. It’s free to attend, of course. But please let us know if you’ll attend, so we can make sure there are enough chairs, and enough bites and drinks after the talks.

Update:

I enjoyed the meetup very much. It was an excellent mix of experienced accessibility experts and, hopefully, the next generation of accessibility experts. I am biased, of course, but I absolutely loved Nienke’s talk about all the research she did for her graduation project. You should ask her to talk at your events as well!