Digital Accessibility Lightning Talks 2016

To switch things up, we're hosting a lightning talk event; multiple 15-20 minute talks on diverse topics all related to digital accessibility, including gaming, alternative text and more.

Schedule

• 6:00 p.m.: Doors open

• 6:20 p.m.: Housekeeping Announcements

• 6:30 p.m.: First Lightning Talk Begins

• 6:50 p.m.: Second Lightning Talk Begins

• 7:10 p.m.: Third Lightning Talk Begins

• 7:30 p.m.: eBook giveaway, Wrap-up & Networking

Important Information

• Deadline to RSVP for this event is Tuesday, Oct. 4th at 12 Noon. You will not be able to RSVP after this deadline. We’re capped at 80 attendees, so RSVP now if interested in this meetup. The RSVP list will be sent, as required, to building security.

• You must RSVP with your Full Legal name (as it appears on your ID). Building security will likely not let you enter without the ability to check full legal name. If your full legal name is not represented with your RSVP, please do one of the following to ensure easy access to this meetup:

• Log into meetup.com and change your Profile name to your legal name (preferred)

• Send me your full legal name (via the meetup.com site) via “message.” I will then update the downloaded information for building security.

Here's the current line-up in no particular order. More details to follow:

Tau Station: A Space Adventure for Everyone
Tau Station is a sci-fi themed massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), set in a dystopian future where the human race is fighting to survive. While it is a beautiful game with some amazing artwork, it works great as an accessible game because the text tells the story. This quick overview will tell you how we made Tau Station accessible, and will give a brief demo illustrating this.

Jason Crome is a 20 year veteran of the software industry, working on everything from Powerbuilder and SQL Server to Perl and PostgreSQL. He is currently a Technical Lead for All Around the World, serving as the project manager for the Tau Station MMORPG. He is also a member of the Perl Dancer development team.

Color contrast and alt attributes on npr.org
• Part 1: Learn how we are improving color contrast on npr.org. The process is also an opportunity to address existing technical debt.

• Part 2: An explanation about the "null" alt attribute value, and how it is helpful on images with visible - and therefore screen reader accessible - captions.

Todd Welstein is a UI Developer in NPR's Digital Media group, spending most of his time building and maintaining npr.org. He's worked on nearly all areas of the site, from the homepage to stories to Tiny Desk Concerts. He has a B.S. in Human-Computer Interaction.

Accessibility into Automation
An introduction and demonstration to aXe " the Accessibility Engine" created by Deque which can be used for in browser testing, automation unit testing and JavaScript task runners. This lighting talk will demonstrate both the in browser testing and how you could leverage aXe in a Gulp process which is a JavaScript task runner.

Seth M Kane is a Technology Lead @ Critical Mass, with more than 16 years of marketing, advertising and consulting experience providing subject matter expertise in front-end engineering, user experience development and technical project management while focusing on accessibility, rich single page applications, responsive design, e-commerce, and CMS driven technology solutions.