Professional Testers with Disabilities

Join us for an online meetup with Heather Burns and John G. Samuel on working with professional testers with disabilities!

Come learn how you can easily incorporate IT professionals with disabilities into your product development cycle. Collaborating remotely allows people with vision disabilities to test products using their own computers and assistive technologies. Using video conferencing technology, a professional IT tester, that has a visual disability, can share both their screen and computer sound. This provides a full view of what the tester is experiencing.

LCI (https://www.lcindustries.com/) is one of the largest employers of Americans who are blind and visually impaired, currently employing over 350 individuals that are blind or low vision. LCI creates over 2,000 products and distributes thousands more through manufacturing, retail, nationwide distribution and e-commerce channels. Using Equal Entry as a case study lean how to partner for an enhanced accessibility experience.

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Schedule

• 6:00 pm CT: Zoom waiting room opens for those who have RSVP-ed
• 6:10 pm CT: YouTube Live (YTL) begins. YTL is a fallback if Zoom is full or for those who prefer not to use Zoom. YTL link will be shared here in the comment section when Zoom goes live
• 6:20 pm CT: Announcements
• 6:30 pm CT: Talk / Q&A
• 7:30 pm CT: Wrap up / Closing thoughts

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About the speakers

Heather Burns’ passion for Accessibility started early, turning self-advocacy into a student run organization to help others gain the accommodations they needed for academic success. At Microsoft, she worked on the accessibility of Windows and the Office family of products, becoming a co-inventor of UIAutomation (US Patents 7,644,367 & 7,490,313). Heather is currently a full time Accessibility Consultant for Equal Entry, a company founded by a former Microsoft accessibility peer Thomas Logan. Equal Entry provides clients with Accessibility expertise through audits, training and expert witness testimony. She is a Certified Professional in Web Accessibility (CPWA) and Trusted Tester for Web on Windows (TTv5).

John G. Samuel is an award winning business development leader, with over thirteen years of experience building strategic partnerships, designing profitable business models, and transforming organizations around the world. He is currently the Head of LCI Tech and is responsible for launching the new technology services business for LCI, which is one of the largest employers of Americans who are blind. He is a Certified Professional in Accessibility Core Competencies (CPACC).

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This event will be live-streamed and live-captioned. Recording will be made available and posted on youtube.com/a11ychi.

Links

• Zoom: Visible to those who has RSVP-ed
• YouTube Live: Will be generated at time of event and posted here
• Live captioning: https://www.streamtext.net/player?event=CDA

For those who are RSVP-ing:
RSVP as soon as possible as there is a max capacity of 100 participants with Zoom. You will be able to interact with the presenters during Q&A time. And socialize / get to know other community members before the presentation.

If you're not able to join Zoom:
We've enabled Zoom to live-stream with YouTube Live (20-sec delay), so you can watch the presentation. YTL link will be generated when Zoom goes live. We will update this page and post on social channels. We will monitor YTL chat if you have questions for the presenters, and we’ll do our best to relay to them during the discussion.

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About recording and privacy:
In Zoom, everyone's video camera and audio mic are muted by default. They can be un-muted by each individual's preference

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An Accessible Experience

If you need accommodation for this event, please contact us ASAP, so we can ensure we can accommodate you.

We’ll update this event page to note any new details and accessibility info.