About us
Our group exists to advance accessibility and inclusive design. Our goal is to bring together NYC's accessibility community to share ideas, best practices, and our experiences. If you're interested in accessibility and inclusive design then we want you in this group. We meet monthly, our previous presentations are all archived on YouTube. Follow us on Twitter @A11YNYC.
Event sponsored by:
- AKQA, a s a digital design and communications agency.
- Deque, a leader in digital accessibility tools, services, and training
- Equal Entry, a digital accessibility consultancy focused on results
- Evinced, the software for accessible development
- Fable, an accessibility platform powered by people with disabilities
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Upcoming events
2
PDF to Accessible Markdown: Introducing Equalify Reflow, an Open Source AI Tool
72 Spring St, New York, NY, USThis event will be online at YouTube and in-person (New York City). The speaker and live stream starts at 7:30 pm ET. In-person attendees may arrive as early as 7 pm ET. If arriving late, please leave a comment on this page and someone will come down ASAP.
Description
Members of the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) Digital Accessibility Team will introduce Equalify Reflow, an open-source, agentic AI tool that transforms inaccessible PDFs into dynamic, accessible assets.The presentation will cover common institutional challenges with PDFs, why the team uses Markdown, and how AI is informing decisions about building and scaling PDF remediation. The team will also explain why the work is being released as open source and why UIC is investing in open-source digital accessibility solutions.
This session is designed for accessibility leaders and engineers building new solutions. Attendees will leave with a clearer understanding of the opportunities and limitations of AI-assisted PDF remediation, and the role open source can play in advancing digital accessibility—supported by UIC’s growing work in the open-source accessibility space.
The presentation covers:
- Why PDFs continue to be a major accessibility barrier in institutional environments
- How Equalify Reflow converts PDFs into dynamic accessibility assets
- Why Markdown is central to the team’s workflow and long-term content strategy
- How AI supports triage, prioritization, and remediation decisions (and where it should not be trusted)
- What “scalable remediation” looks like in practice: governance, quality controls, and implementation
- Why UIC is releasing the work as open source and investing in open-source accessibility solutions
Presenter bios
Blake Bertuccelli-Booth is UIC’s Assistant Director of Web Accessibility Engineering. In addition to passionately working to advance the rights of people with disabilities, Blake is the creator of Equalify – an open source web accessibility platform – and leads accessibility testing for WordPress. He has spoken at numerous conferences, including HighEdWeb, WordCamp, and WPCampus. Blake is passionate about raising the bar for digital inclusion through open tools, community-driven standards, and real-world impact.Dylan Isaac is an AI accessibility consultant and founder of Enablement Engineering, and a former Lead AI Engineer at Deque Systems, where he invented and built axe Assistant. He's currently building agentic harnesses to solve accessibility and education problems that were previously impossible — including Equalify Reflow, a multi-agent system that converts PDFs into accessible semantic markup. When he's not wrangling AI agents, he's eating wings and shoveling snow in his home in Buffalo 🦬.
Accessibility
The presentation will have human captions [CC], not automatic captions. For ASL preferred speakers, learn about the Aira ASL App, and download it before the event.For the Blind and Low Vision community, learn about the Aira Explorer App and download it before the event.
To access the online webinar for audio description, use the A11yNYC Access Offer to call, or simply inform your Visual Interpreter that you'd like that offer applied when you connect.
For additional accessibility requirements, please email meryl@equalentry.com two weeks before the event.
Livestream
YouTube link.Provided by Internet Society Accessibility SIG.
Location details
The event is on the 4th floor. Everyone must be accompanied to the event on the 4th floor. Because everyone needs to be escorted, please arrive early or on time. When you enter the ground floor, a representative from A11yNYC will be there to provide elevator access.The building is near several transit stops:
6 train- Spring Street (non-accessible stop): 100 feet
- Canal Street (accessible stop): 0.4 miles
NQRW trains
- Prince Street (non-accessible stop): 0.2 miles
- Canal Street (accessible stop): 0.3 miles
M1 / M55 Bus lines
- Broadway/Spring Street stop: 500 feet
Cabs and rideshares can let passengers out right near the building entrance
Important note
Google Maps currently incorrectly pins the location around the corner on Crosby Street. The entrance is not on Crosby. The entrance is on Spring Street, inside the Marc Jacobs International building. It is roughly halfway between Crosby and Lafayette, almost directly across Spring Street from the Chipotle restaurant.Traveling to the event?
We recommend Hotel on Rivington or Crosby Street Hotel.Accreditation
All A11yNYC meetups are pre-approved for IAAP Continuing Accessibility Education Credits (CAEC).Sponsors
Thanks to Aira, AKQA, Deque, Evinced, Equal Entry, and Fable for sponsoring. Want to be a sponsor? Contact meryl@equalentry.com110 attendees
The Clarity of Social Accessibility
72 Spring St, New York, NY, USThis event will be online on YouTube and in-person (New York City). The speaker and live stream starts at 7:30 pm ET. In-person attendees may arrive as early as 7 pm ET. If arriving late, please leave a comment on this page and someone will come down ASAP.
Description
Without social accessibility, or the acceptance of disabled people as peers in life value, the struggle to infuse society with the physical, environmental and digital elements of accessibility that we all require will remain aspirational. The creation of access as a design driver, not only in physical or digital space but also throughout society is the prerequisite to making accessibility like breathing, because disability is living.Our challenge is for recognition, not inclusion. Inclusion is an expression of an empathetic offering to come inside a boundary set by another. Yet, we are already there, and it is up to us to draw – or erase – any boundary lines. Inclusion was begun as and remains a tool of privilege that highlights, inadvertently or not, the prime position of the extender or enabler of inclusivity. Our challenge now is to complete the reframing of disability and disabled living as a social continuum like any other.
This presentation is a discussion of the ongoing resistance to the comprehensive adoption of accessibility in all forms, where it comes from and why it endures. It offers a framework for dismantling it called Social Accessibility.
The presentation answers these questions:
- Is Social Accessibility a third foundation of accessibility or something else? Where does it belong?
- What’s the Contagion Response?
- What’s wrong with inclusion?
- What is the role of empathy in understanding disability and in recognizing disability equity?
- Is there something we can learn from older people entering disability?
- Where do I start?
Presenter bio
Peter Slatin is a writer, accessibility consultant, and disability advocate. Peter, who is blind, founded Slatin Group LLC, in 2012 to provide education and training on disability equity and social accessibility to clients across a range of business and civic enterprises.
Peter is an adjunct professor at the New York Institute of Technology and an award-winning journalist and editor whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Forbes.He received the 2007 Oculus Award for Excellence in Architectural Journalism from AIA NYC. He was a 2020-21 Encore Public Voices Fellow with the Op-Ed Project, and was named a 2021 Accessibility Champion by Visions/Services for the Blind.
Peter is Chair of the board of directors of Empire State Employment Resources for the Blind, a board director of the Colorado Center for the Blind, and a founding director of Camp Possibilities International, which supports blind children and youth in Kenya. Peter holds an M.F.A. from Hunter College CUNY and a B.F.A. from SUNY New Paltz.
Accessibility
The presentation will have human captions [CC], not automatic captions. For ASL preferred speakers, learn about the Aira ASL App, and download it before the event.For the Blind and Low Vision community, learn about the Aira Explorer App and download it before the event. To access the online webinar for audio description, use the A11yNYC Access Offer to call, or simply inform your Visual Interpreter that you'd like that offer applied when you connect.
For additional accessibility requirements, please email meryl@equalentry.com two weeks before the event.
Livestream
YouTube link.Provided by Internet Society Accessibility SIG.
Location details
The event is on the 4th floor. Everyone must be accompanied to the event on the 4th floor. Because everyone needs to be escorted, please arrive early or on time. When you enter the ground floor, a representative from A11yNYC will be there to provide elevator access.The building is near several transit stops:
6 train- Spring Street (non-accessible stop): 100 feet
- Canal Street (accessible stop): 0.4 miles
B/D/F/M
- Broadway-Lafayette St., 0.2 miles
NQRW trains
- Prince Street (non-accessible stop): 0.2 miles
- Canal Street (accessible stop): 0.3 miles
M1 / M55 Bus lines
- Broadway/Spring Street stop: 500 feet
Cabs and rideshares can let passengers out right near the building entrance
Important note
Google Maps currently incorrectly pins the location around the corner on Crosby Street. The entrance is not on Crosby. The entrance is on Spring Street, inside the Marc Jacobs International building. It is roughly halfway between Crosby and Lafayette, almost directly across Spring Street from the Chipotle restaurant.Traveling to the event?
We recommend Hotel on Rivington or Crosby Street Hotel.Accreditation
All A11yNYC meetups are pre-approved for IAAP Continuing Accessibility Education Credits (CAEC).Sponsors
Thanks to Aira, AKQA, Deque, Evinced, Equal Entry, and Fable for sponsoring. Want to be a sponsor? Contact meryl@equalentry.com4 attendees
Past events
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