San Diego Accessibility & Inclusive Design July Meetup
Details
Come talk accessibility with us at the ServiceNow Campus. We'll have some amazing lightning talks and time for networking and hanging out.
We'll start the lightning talks around 6:45pm. Food and drinks will be provided!
***
Speakers & Topics
What Is It Like To Be An AI Agent? An Exploration of Humanity, Accessibility, and the Limits of Artificial Awareness
Emily Barbenza is a Staff Accessibility Engineer with 13 years at ServiceNow and founding member of their accessibility program. She is a disabled person writing and speaking about AI, disability, and consciousness at the intersection of philosophy of mind and accessibility.
***
WCAG Isn't Mythical: Making Accessibility Guidelines Anyone Can Understand
Justin Salas is a professional rock climber, World Champion, digital accessibility expert, and project manager who is passionate about building products that are simple, easy to use, and fit into life seamlessly. He is the creator of the WCAG-Learn app, built on the idea that anyone should be able to understand and learn the WCAG 2.2 AA success criteria and start building for everyone. Justin isn't a developer. He's a product person who knows that when you're learning something complicated, simple is better. With AI as his building partner, he turned that instinct into WCAG-Learn, proof that bringing a great idea to life is more approachable than it's ever been.
***
The New Front Door: How AI Interfaces Can Improve Access for Blind and Low Vision Users and What We Must Get Right
Blake Steinecke is Digital Accessibility Lead at ServiceNow, helping build the internal accessibility program in the employee-facing product organization. With a background across product and marketing teams, he approaches accessibility as a user experience and organization wide challenge, and as a visually impaired assistive technology user with experience developing AI for the blind community, he brings firsthand perspective to that work. Outside of work he is an adaptive sports enthusiast and has a one year old son.
***
My Story as a Deafblind Person and Building My Businesses
At 19, Kelvin Crosby told himself, "I don't matter. If I wasn't here, no one would miss me."
Born hard of hearing, Kelvin's life changed forever when doctors told him he was also legally blind and would lose his driver's license. In that moment, he faced a choice: keep chasing the life he thought he was supposed to have, or learn to embrace life as a deafblind person.
What happened next didn't come through instant success or easy answers. It began with a simple lump of clay... and a question:
"Could someone who believed he had no value become someone who could help others?"
In this presentation, Kelvin uses pottery to tell a story of grief, identity, resilience, and purpose. As the clay takes shape on the wheel, he shares the lessons he learned while rebuilding his own life—and how that journey eventually led to an innovation that is helping people who are blind and deafblind be seen.
Kelvin invites every audience member to consider one question:
Could the struggle you're trying to escape be the very thing shaping who you're becoming?
***
Please let us know if you have any needs we can accommodate.
Whether you're an accessibility guru or are just curious about what exactly web accessibility and inclusive design are, this event is for you. This group is for designers, developers, project managers, execs... really anyone involved in building and supporting IT products. Let's get together, network, collaborate and learn from one another!
About the Location
We'll be meeting at ServiceNow Building C - Del Mar meeting room.
- Enter the building from the East side. The building is not labeled Building C. The address is 4820 Eastgate Mall. There is a reception/lobby ambassador desk where attendees will check in.
- Go towards the glass doors (key card access only), and make a left towards Del Mar.
- The meeting room entrance is the first door on the left. The gender-neutral restroom is past the first door.