The AccessibilityOz team is back from a very busy week in San Diego for the 33rd annual CSUN Assistive Technology Conference! Our booth handed out adorable clip-on koalas, our ever-popular fidget spinners and our even more popular Australian Caramello Koalas (which we ran out of on the second day! We’ll be sure to bring more next year!).
Our CEO, Gian Wild, gave three presentations at the conference:
- The accessibility of video players
- Social media and accessibility
- Interactive maps – how do you make them accessible?
Our Business Development Manager, Kisiah Timmons, gave one:
A correction to Gian’s Social Media and Accessibility presentation: Facebook does allow for alt text on uploaded photos. You can read about how on their Help Center article.
This CSUN marked a significant change in Gian’s Social Media and Accessibility presentation – when before LinkedIn had been lagging behind the other major platforms when it came to accessibility, this year Gian was able to award them the distinction of Most Improved and Most Accessible! Who will win these awards in November at Accessing Higher Ground? You’ll just have to attend to find out!
Disability rights lawyer Lainey Feingold’s Digital Accessibility Legal Update presentation was a must-see at CSUN this year (as it is every year). If you missed it, her presentation slides are available via OneDrive, and we recommend reading her CSUN Wrap-Up Post.
George Zamfir, the Accessibility Product Manager at Slack, was joined by other Slack staff to give three presentations on Slack’s integration of more accessible features, such as how the company is making it easier to use Slack with a screen reader.
Curious about what else happened at CSUN 2018? Check out these other CSUN wrap-up posts:
- Takeaways from the 2018 CSUN Assistive Technology Conference – Microsoft
- CSUN 2018 Accessibility Interview: Denis Boudreau, Principal Web Accessibility Consultant and Strategist, Deque – Microassist
- How smartglasses help the blind see; conference spotlights assistive technologies – The San Diego Union-Tribune
Gian’s session on Social Media and Accessibility was very informative. It was helpful for me to see where the accessibility potholes were in each channel. Microsoft’s focus and impact on accessibility and inclusion in the past few years has been huge, and it was encouraging to see that being spread far and wide, including to LinkedIn. I look forward to hearing more, and to seeing what your future tests reveal!
Also, thanks for the link to Denis’ interview. He was a delight to talk to! His and other interviews are also on our CSUN ATC 2018 backchannel, too.
Thanks for posting this wonderful wrap-up. As much as I’d like to go to CSUN some year, I just don’t have the resources to do it right at this time. But my brother has been going for awhile and he has represented his company Level Access, formerly SSB Bart Group. Both of us are longtime screen reader users. I also hear Stevie Wonder is a frequent attendee at these conferences. I like Stevie not only for his music, but also his view on assistive technology. I hope to meet him in person sometime as well, perhaps at CSUN.