AI Accessibility: Perspectives From Australia

Talk 1: "Sean’s AI Accessibility Dreams" — Sean Curtis wants to talk to you about AI. Yes, yes — another talk about AI. However this talk is about his Sean’s dreams for accessibility in a world obsessed with AI.

Talk 2: "Building Design Allies, Not Robots" — Erin McIlroy will explore how Canva is scaling accessibility and research with AI, while keeping people at the center. It shares examples of how teams are experimenting with AI to improve workflows and support inclusive design. These examples show how AI can empower designers, streamline accessibility work, and make inclusive design easier and more consistent across teams.

Speaker Bio: Sean Curtis is a frontend developer living near Cairns, in Far North Queensland. He’s been working on the web since getting confused as to the difference between divs and layers back in 1995.

After 13 amazing years working at Atlassian on Jira, the Atlassian Design System, and coordinating many accessibility audits, Sean set out to build something of his own; something selfish: a Jira plugin that would generate VPAT/ACR documents directly from accessibility issues in his projects. Thus Remediator.app was born.

Speaker Bio: Erin McIlroy is an Accessibility Product Design Lead at Canva and an IAAP Certified Web Accessibility Specialist. She supports accessibility across Canva and leads work to improve design quality and fairness through co-design, research with the disability community, and the power of AI.

Event Agenda:

• 7:00 pm — Event begins, welcome new members. Accessibility industry job announcements & job seeker intros.
• 7:15 to 7:50 pm — "Sean’s AI Accessibility Dreams"
• 7:50 to 8:25 pm — "Building Design Allies, Not Robots"
• 8:25 to 8:35 pm [Optional] Socializing & networking in zoom breakout rooms, for anyone who'd enjoy hanging out online after the talk to chat with old friends & new meetup members.

Zoom Information:

• How to participate via zoom: The Zoom URL will be shared via email with people who RSVP via Meetup app or site. It will and also published on this event page on the day of the event.
• Check to make sure your email settings are enabled to receive "event updates from organizers" (
  https://www.meetup.com/account/comm/a11ybay/)
  in your account settings or you may not receive relevant messages.
• How socializing 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 smaller conversations with randomized participants.
  If you do not feel comfortable making conversation with other people during this meetup, we'll pause briefly after the main talks so you can log off. Those who want to chat just stay on the zoom!