I’m excited to announce details for our second Detroit User Experience (UX) group’s Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD), Detroit on May 21, 2015.
GAAD is a day for web professionals to learn about digital accessibility and how to make the web more accessible and usable by people with different disabilities.
Started in 2012 by Joe Devon and Jennison Asuncion, GAAD has helped to spread awareness of digital accessibility with events featuring workshops, presentations, talks, and hands-on activities.
As of today (May 7, 2015), more than 25 GAAD events have been planned around the world, including Australia, United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Korea, Japan, Switzerland, India, and Estonia.
Starting in 2015, the event will place each year on the third Thursday of May.
Who Is This Event For?
Our GAAD Detroit event is for user experience professionals, designers, developers, programmers, content strategists, digital marketers, project managers, and social media experts; any web professional interested in learning about and improving digital accessibility.
Web Accessibility and Interactive Workshops
How well can people with disabilities interact with your websites? How do you begin to make your website accessible?
Our interactive workshop will blend discussion and practice to help familiarize attendees with critical components of web accessibility.
Presenters will talk about four areas of web design that affect accessibility:
- Page structure
- Color
- Non-text content
- Interactive elements
Attendees will learn how to evaluate the accessibility of their site against standard accessibility criteria.
Additionally, attendees will have time to brainstorm with trained accessibility consultants on strategies for improving the accessibility of their site.
And there’s an opportunity to play an accessibility-based version of Chutes and Ladders!
Speakers
- Rebecca Zantjier, Detroit UX member, former Michigan State University Usability Accessibility Research and Consulting (UARC) user experience intern, and soon-to-be user experience researcher at Owens Corning
- Phil Deaton, user experience intern, Michigan State University (UARC) user experience intern
- Marta Werbanowska, usability and accessibility intern, Michigan State University College of Arts and Letters
Event Details
The event will be held at Wayne State University Undergraduate Library in Detroit, Michigan from 6:30pm to 8:30pm. Pre-registration is required, cost is $5.00.
We’ll have networking and refreshments (food and soft drinks/water) from 6:30pm to 7:00pm; presentations begin at 7:10pm.
Special thanks to Wayne State University School of Library and Information Science for graciously hosting our event and sponsoring food.
Hope to see you there!
