Accessibility Awareness and Foundations Webinar

This webinar has concluded and registration is closed.

In celebration of this year's Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD), Deque offered a three-hour virtual training event. Attendees learned what digital accessibility is, why it’s important, how people with disabilities navigate the web, and how to champion accessibility to make a difference in your organization today.

This training was intended for all audiences; including policymakers, management, content creators, developers, designers, testers, and everything in between.

This event was divided into three components, which include plenty of time for Q&A. Topics included:

    1. What is digital accessibility and why it matters 
      • Building the business case for digital inclusion
      • How people with disabilities use digital technologies
      • Involving people with disabilities in the development process
    2. First-hand lived experiences and barriers faced by people with various disabilities
      • Challenges faced and lessons learned - the a11yRules podcast experiment
    3. Next steps for getting started: building for accessibility by leveraging technology
      • Getting started - leveraging automated tools for inclusion
      • Getting ahead - keyboard navigation as a key foundation for inclusion
      • Practical next steps to make a difference (not just on GAAD!)

About the Speakers

Esteemed Guest Speaker - Nic Steenhout

nicsteenhout

As a developer in the mid-’90s, Nicolas Steenhout was approached by clients facing issues not yet part of the public consciousness. On the emerging web, accessibility hurdles were keeping people with disabilities from engaging with a technological revolution.

Confronted by this gap within the digital landscape, Nic began championing web accessibility. He transitioned into the non-profit sector where he collaborated with people with a wide variety of impairments and was introduced to new assistive technologies.

Now, Nic is a renowned speaker, trainer, consultant, blogger, and host of the A11y Rules Podcast. With over twenty-five years of experience and having worked on three continents, he’s engaged with thousands of individuals with disabilities. 

You can find Nic on his site incl.ca and on LinkedIn.

Denis Boudreau - Director, Instructor-Led Training Services

denis-boudreau-400x400-300x300Denis has dedicated the last 20+ years of his career to converting clients into digital inclusion believers. A strong advocate of a participant-centered approach to training, Denis passionately believes that students can learn twice as much in half the time when their brains do most of the talking during a training session.

He loves to spend as much time as possible coming up with new, innovative strategies to foster engagement and participation from learners, by designing activities and hands-on learning experiences that force students to flex their creative muscles to come up with solutions to make the digital world a more inclusive space for everyone. 

Tim Harshbarger - Senior Accessibility Consultant

Tim Harshbarger-1Tim is a Senior Accessibility Consultant at Deque specializing in training. Tim has assisted project teams in making their applications accessible for over 24 years. He spent most of that time with a Fortune 30 company before joining Deque.