Global Accessibility Awareness Day #GAAD Celebration & Community Social

• How to participate:

The zoom URL and password will be shared the morning of Thursday, May 21 with people who RSVP and are listed as attendees on this webpage. Check the email account associated with your meetup membership on the day of the event for the zoom meeting ID, link, and password.

• About this online meetup:

Thursday, May 21, 2020 will mark our seventh A11yBay celebration for GAAD, Global Accessibility Awareness Day (https://globalaccessibilityawarenessday.org/). The purpose of GAAD is to get everyone talking, thinking, and learning about digital access and inclusion and people with diverse disabilities.

We're super excited to host 2 guest speakers: Alexis Lucio, Inclusive Design Lead at Splunk, and Suzanne Levine, Text reader user and Digital Accessibility program creator, County of Marin.

Talk title:
"Moving Beyond 'Colors and Fonts' in Accessibility Design"

Guest speaker:
Alexis Lucio (Inclusive Design Lead at company Splunk)

Synopsis: Contrast and legibility in accessibility design is a win in any organization, and it’s just the beginning! Alexis will highlight the different ways you can expand your view on user experience within accessibility design and how to incorporate these aspects into your design system and process.

Talk title:
"Group Discussion: Accessibility in the age of COVID-19"

Guest speaker:
Suzanne Levine (Text reader user and Digital Accessibility program creator, County of Marin)

Synopsis: Digital accessibility is front and center as work and social lives have moved online. It’s a good time to reflect and share the challenges and glimmers of success from these past 3 months. What have been accessibility issues and concerns? Who has been bringing them up? Employees, the public, customers? Have priorities changed? Bring your issues and ideas for a group share and problem solving exchange to help each other out as a community.

• Optional food & drink:

Grab any beverage of your choice to raise a glass to GAAD and our Bay Area community. Feel free to snack or eat dinner during the zoom since this online event takes place during the evening—please just remember to mute your microphone!

• Event agenda & job announcements:

6:30 – 7:00, Social time in breakout rooms (a series of quick, relaxed conversations with fellow members)

7:00 – 7:15, Event welcome with Jennison & Michael, Job announcements, Job seeker intros

7:15 – 8:20, A11yBay members Suzanne Levine and Alexis Lucio will each lead a conversation to engage our local community in accessibility talks and Q&A

8:30 ~ 9:00, [optional] Social time in breakout rooms (a series of quick, relaxed conversations with fellow members)

• How social time in break out rooms will work:

We’ll use the zoom breakout rooms feature to give folks an opportunity to network and chat with others in small, manageable conversations (like 3-4 people per chat room).

Here is a help center article from Zoom on how to participate in break out rooms if they are new to you:
https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/115005769646-Participating-in-breakout-rooms?

We’ll try 8-minute conversation sessions, so guests have a little time to get to know each other, but not too much time for things to get awkward. After one 8 minute hangout, the host will call all the chat rooms back together and randomly mix up your conversation partners for another 8-minute lightning chat.

If you do not feel comfortable making conversation with other people during this meetup, you can just join for the main program content from 7:00 – 8:20 pm.

• Text transcript note:

We intend to record this meetup for accessibility purposes. With a recording, it is easier to provide an auto-generated zoom transcript of the audio after the meetup concludes. If you need a text transcript of the audio after the event, please let the organizers know by emailing accessibilitybayarea@gmail.com.