Web Accessibility Firechat with Léonie Watson & Hidde de Vries

Join us for a virtual fire chat on web #accessibility. We are super happy to have Léonie and Hidde with us to talk with our community and exchange ideas with YOU on various #a11y aspects, including the latest developments (such as in the area of voice recognition).

The discussions will be kickstarted by a lightning talk from Hidde about CMS accessibility.

Lightning Talk: "Your CMS is an accessibility assistant"

When it comes to web accessibility, timing is of the essence. It’s easier when you do it earlier. What if your CMS could spot content problems and help you fix them, before your content even goes live? What if it could warn content editors about potential issues, ship with accessible defaults, make it easier to see content structure implications and offer alternatives to inaccessible content (like colours with better contrast). In Hidde’s talk, you’ll learn how these kinds of features can help you “shift left”.

👉 About Léonie Watson

Léonie is Director of TetraLogical; a member of the W3C Board of Directors; and co-Chair of the W3C Web Applications Working Group.
Amongst other things, Léonie is co-organiser of the Inclusive Design 24 (#id24) conference; co-author of the Inclusive Design Principles; and mentor to young people interested in the fields of accessibility and inclusive design. She is also a Microsoft Most Valued Professional (MVP).

Léonie is often found at conferences, talking about web standards, accessibility mechanics, and pushing the boundaries of inclusive design (with existing technologies like SVG, HTML, ARIA, and JavaScript, as well as new technologies like AI and WebVR). She has also written about some of these things for Smashing magazine, SitePoint.com, and Net magazine, as well as on her own site tink.uk.

In her spare time, Léonie likes reading, cooking, drinking tequila, and dancing (although not necessarily in that order)!

Website: https://tink.uk/

👉 About Hidde de Vries

Hidde is a freelance front-end, accessibility and design systems specialist. Previously, he worked for organisations including the Dutch government, W3C (WAI), Sanity.io and Mozilla.

He is a generalist with over a decade of experience building websites. His focus has been mostly on end users: web accessibility, performance and usability.

For the last five years, more of his work has been about teaching and helping teams. From workshops about accessibility, CSS and design systems to accessibility audits and conference talks.

Background: He started out studying Artificial Intelligence, but ended up getting a bachelor and master’s degree in Philosophy. How it relates to front-end work? Abstractions!

Website: https://hidde.blog/