A11y Camp 2025 Sketch Notes & Transcript
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A11y Camp 2025 – Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, 29th and 30th October, Day 1 – Part 1
10 year anniversary written on a banner with balloons
Inclusion is part of everything we do.
Celebration of our community.
- Gathering
- Connecting
- Supporting
- Sharing insights
Fireside Chat with Jennison Asuncion and Sarah Pulis
Caricature of Jennison, Co Founder of GAAD, saying “Apply for the GAAD speakers fund!,” with short hair and open-collared shirt. Caricature of Sarah speaking, with short hair, glasses, and earrings.
“Accessibility needed to go mainstream”.
Business using the Global Awareness Day to market their products. Promoting internal & external accessibility. Skyscrapers in a cityscape.
Let’s uplift new folks.
Fun & entertainment – balloons
Socialising – hands reaching towards each other
Keep supporting the changes – a pair of hands forming a supportive platform
Let’s have honest conversations. $ How much do we make? Salary survey – let’s do it!
Velocity of production is a sprint. A person swimming.
We need to keep up. Run as fast as you can and remember… it doesn’t need to be perfect. Make it better than it was! A trophy with a question mark on it.
Exclamation mark warning sign. Beware burn-out.
Build the muscle in the workplace, represented with a muscly arm… build accessibility into the process as its own thing.
The culture should be making accessibility approachable. Realistically we’re not getting that acceptance everywhere. Let’s inspire and engage.
AI will not replace the lived experience. It will free us up to do more important things! A robot with “a.i.” on its chest says “I can do testing! Inspections etc.”
Let’s understand the experience (a person with long hair looks pensive, with an exclamation mark above their head). It’s not about a “technical solution”.
Ricky Onsman – Disabled is the New Normal
Caricature of Ricky labeled “Writing the rules”; Ricky is saying “I have to get the writing right because words matter.”
Industrial revolution led to judging people at scale. Schools were the same… uniforms for uniform behaviour.
A fan with stick arms and legs, “you can’t keep up with the machines”.
Disability is normal. Making life difficult for people with disability is NOT! People with Disability are not the problem.
Inclusive design. Because universal design doesn’t work.
Not understanding or caring – “Not like us!” with a red cross mark OR Ablism is all about the medical model with a red cross mark.
Self indulgent. A person with short hair and a smarmy expression says “There’s something wrong with you, so it’s amazing you can do stuff!”
Call it out. Not softly, softly. Change language.
Michelle Macdonald – Warp Speed to Accessibility: Fast-Tracking Inclusive Testing
Caricature of Michell says “Star Trek challenged the norms.”
Who are the villains of the accessibility galaxy?
Removing these traits will increase our testing speeds:
- Dreaded firewall
- Weekend warriors
- Last minute attention
Sketch Group logo. Captured with Heart symbol on Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung land by @SketchGrp.
A11y Camp 2025 Day 1 – Part 2
Michelle Macdonald …continued
Test early and often. Computer monitors and a magnifying glass.
Real time feedback. Broaden testing types.
Reason & logic. Identify the barriers! A red and white striped construction barrier. Reduce time and faster pinpoint the pain points.
Highlight human need. Shift from this: checkmark – to this: UX.
Optimise testing conditions and automate. Work with developers – watch those plugins! Test case your matrix. Challenge assumptions.
A Vulcan with the Starship Enterprise and a ringed planet in the background says “Live long and prosper.”
Maia Miller and Lauren Hayes – Teaming Up in a Solo World: Collaboration in Freelance Accessibility Work
Caricatures of Maia and Lauren with multiple speech bubbles:
Its about telling people around you so they know what’s going on, and not feeling guilty.
Shiny things for light-dependent people to look at! with a lightbulb
We wake up every day to something different.
There’s no one to motivate us each day… we have to do it!
We quote together. Heart symbol. Clients love our different perspectives – beyond the theoretical. User experience, audit, documentation.
We have different interests, contracting to each other in partnership.
Trusting each other’s way of working.
Feeling safe!
It prevents burn out.
We are less stressed, making our own rules & leading by example with the text surrounded by bright yellow dots representing lights. Great for clients.
Our lives are better working and learning together on the job. Explore a partnership that works for you.
Matthew Mack – Screen-reader + Maths = ???
Caricature of Matthew saying “Screen-readers need to be explicit.”
Is velocity the problem? A computer monitor with a face on the screen emits the sound “Blah blah”.
Screen readers don’t do it well! Speech bubble “They’re doing their job but…”
Sign that reads “LaTeX outputs are PDFs!”. Making them accessible takes a lot of work!
A new XML-based language that outputs to everything? Yes, but it’s very technical… not great UX.
Too much technical knowledge required for existing solutions to work broadly.
Always researching for better accessibility experiences.
Sarah Pulis – Measuring Digital Accessibility: From Compliance to Impact
Caricature of Sarah, Intopia founder.
Passionate about accessibility maturity.
Always surprised how little research is done! At the end! Ticking boxes.
How is it even measured? What is the org-wide structure? The W3C model still being worked in So we made our own …WTF!
A maturity ladder of five blocks rising in size, labelled in order “Dark ages,” “Emerging,” “Reactive,” “Proactive,” and “Sustainable,” with a rocketship taking off above “Sustainable”.
Culture? Is it core & shared value. How integrated is it in the process? …at the start? …the end? …throughout.
A person stands with a thought bubble above their head “Hmmphh… it’s always a barrier!”
Core accessibility team is necessary for good knowledge & skills.
Support: Do staff have knowledge & training? Look for siloed people & unite. 3 silos, each on its own hill separate from the others.
Comms: are they acceptable and delivered in the right way?
Collect the data & analyse the findings. Conduct yearly to review measurement progress. Can be reviewed in a fun way… and can be revealing.
Sketch Group logo. Captured with Heart symbol on Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung land by @SketchGrp.
A11y Camp 2025 Day 1 – Part 3
Matthew Hallonbacka and Elina Niemelä – Three big accessibility challenges working with React Native
Caricatures of Matthew and Elina saying “cross-platform application challenges”.
Sometimes testing does not follow the logical way you anticipated.
The subtext: issues affecting people with disability are not important:
- Pitfalls!
- Decisions to be made!
- Poor documentation
- No fixes
And technicians aren’t interested in working on issues at ‘big tech’. There are still 50 issues.
It looks like they are… but if they are it takes forever. Meta “it’s a good first issue”.
Herin Hentry – Procurement to Production: Making AS EN 301 549 Work for You!
Caricature of Herin.
We all live in this digital transformation. There are still big gaps in awareness. A kiosk and grocery store shelf.)No more open counters & products.
The solution must meet the standard with a list of all the things that do and don’t meet requirements …what can be flexible – or not.
Privacy. Keeping info safe from hackers… but accessible. Applying to hard-copy & software.
- Audio-visual depts
- Comms depts
- Facilities
- Content & Software requirements
See without sight.
Reach not far.
Touch a star -a hand touches a star
Hear not, but feel what’s around.
Meet suppliers where they are. Legal contracts – be familiar and use if needed.
Don’t leave it til the end!
Risk! If productivity of accessibility-affected people is at risk – that’s serious.
Review one process at a time and make changes.
Erwin Gelens – Inclusive Journeys: How Schiphol is Putting the Euro Accessibility Act into Practice
Caricature of Erwin.
Schiphol is one of the biggest airports in the world. Not all airports are good or good across the whole complex. An airplane flies straight upwards toward a cloud. We’re not 100% accessible so there is still work to do!
A big focus on digital accessibility. Height / mobility for all European journeys. What’s the entire experience? Joint responsibility: digital & physical.
“You have to be able to use all services by yourself.”
We have to comply or get fined. We’re getting better at collaborating with other organisations. Partnerships – thumbs up. Government can be good.
Fines can help motivate companies into future compliance. “I’m not afraid of them.”
Pawel Wodkowski – From Checkbox to Culture: Scaling Accessibility for 500 Designers
Caricature of Pawel.
Culture change is actual change. Its embedded so you don’t have to be a hero everyday! Lego figure says “everything is awesome?”
“Was I making my figures look good?”
I started listening.
How supported, motivated, and aware? Needs? Build around these!
Surveying challenged some assumptions.
Find the community model for your organisation. “Don’t build it yourself”.
Sketch Group logo. Captured with Heart symbol on Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung land by @SketchGrp.
A11y Camp 2025 Day 1 – Part 4
Allison Ravenhall & Nika Khodjasteh – Delivering Digital Accessibility Training at Scale
Caricatures of Allison & Nika speaking.
Uplift with arrows pointing to:
- Knowledge gaps preventing good intentions.
- Creating better outcomes, using the right language – to be relevant you need to be specific.
Training has to be usable & scalable & at your own speed online.
Take the training to where the people are.
Mandate it! Hit the hip pocket and watch the take up!
Get ‘em all talking, a mouth speaking with a speech bubble “Career development plans”.
People love recognition. A certificate, and a stick person celebrating, saying “yayyy.”
… we are talking to people about things that matter. 95% care!
The training program went better than we thought. Enable at the top as well as bottom up.
Make it interactive & interesting.
How will you handle the change management piece? It’s about the little things too in communication.
Panel Discussion: Scaling Accessibility for Sustained Impact
It starts with feedback and continually evolving with it.
Criticism is a great step to change. Feet walking.
Software developers have been a problem. How do we stop bugs? Speech bubble containing an exclamation mark.
Shift strategy. “It’s all good, we’ve got it logged.” Is it all just making you feel good?
Accountability.
We’re on a journey. A winding path with a signpost that reads “What does accessibility mean to your organisation?”Make it sustainable & relevant for tomorrow. What does governance look like at an employee level? …or procurement?
Provide guidance the whole way. A helping hand waves.
Engage!
Provide transparency and control processes to enable teams to prioritise issues & fixes. Make collaborative decisions to understand how and when to proceed. Smash that backlog!
Resistance is cultural. The broadcast act doesn’t cover everything. We won’t caption everything because we don’t have the resources (money!). We hope A.I. will keep improving. Robot with “a.i.” on its chest says “I do ok sometimes!”
You can have an impact at a human level. A person peeks around the corner of the words “human level”. It’s an amazing opportunity …so lean into it! “Everyone trips up!”
Keep having those conversations with leadership. Align it with the big strategies & corporate goals.
Start small. Prove it out. A small animal pokes its head out of a hole, with the word “Yay” above its head.)
It is cost efficient to get the design right early!
Sketch Group logo. Captured with Heart symbol on Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung land by @SketchGrp.
A11y Camp 2025 – Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, 29th and 30th October, Day 2 – Part 1
“Celebrating 10 years” highlighted in a circle surrounded by bright yellow lights and balloons.
Joe Devon – Raising the Bar: AIMAC and the Future of Accessible AI Development
Caricature of Joe saying “GAAM Amazon whole month of training.” and “To be here is… a dream come true… accessibility is personal, at times, it hurts!
Not about ‘Marketing’, highlighted with a dollar note – it’s about real impact!
Get involved – it matters. Speech bubble “All skillsets have value, you don’t need to be a coder to volunteer”.
Vision and community can achieve a lot. An eye and a group of people.
Humans will be good at giving instructions for AI to do the coding. A cartoon figure speaking pointing up to the last sentence.
AI & Coding racing. A rectangle-shaped caricature figure running fast.
E.g. Google Gemini. Billions of lines of code.
All coding will be done by AI so it must be accessible.
Testing and assessing.
It’s not easy, so good researchers are critical. Speech bubble “Work with accessibility teams to test the models. ‘Fixes’ Sometimes they make mistakes. ‘Quite’ good on good days.”
AIMAC.
Targeting AI modelling companies.
Illustration of a scared robot on an archery target with an arrow going towards it with a speech bubble saying “Listing the top models cost effectively”.
Reaching the companies that are not doing well – feedback to them.
Model companies pay attention to press and the stockmarket. They want good scores.
Anthony Vasquez – Autonomous Vehicle Accessibility: The Good, The Bad and The Game Changing
Caricature of Anthony saying ” What is the ride share experience right now?”
A person with a guide dog and a speech bubble from an invisible person saying “NO!”.
A person in a wheelchair scratching their head with the thought bubble “?”. Still waiting
Cityscape with a person driving a red car in the foreground.
In the WAYMO – testing a self-driving vehicle in LA audio descriptions are pretty good”.
Car comes to pick you up.
Tells you when it stops for pedestrians.
Drop off wasn’t great – across the street.
Credit to WYMO for testing accessibility.
Is there a backup if the app fails?
A “Where am I” button?
AC control?
Opportunity for social, economic, political inclusion,
Affordability? They are too expensive.
We spend time in cars over long distances in cities.
Starting soon in Australia.
It must be accessible – it needs to improve.
Bogdan Sikora – Accessibility And Modern Engineering
Caricature of Bogdan saying “Need to be able to work with A.I.”.
Engineers must be able to work site-wide – front and back-end.
A road sign with the word “Challenging!” on it.
An arrow going from: AccessTime, through a magnifying glass to: Component libraries ‘just work’ right out of the box.
Our advice is ignored because accessibility is too hard.
The problem with my advice… You’re doing it wrong.
A person smiling and holding one of their hands up, pointing at the viewer.
Sketch Group logo. Captured with Heart symbol on Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung land by @SketchGrp.
A11y Camp 2025 Day 2 – Part 2
Bogdan Sikora – Accessibility And Modern Engineering continued.
It’s a people issue.
Make accessibility development faster. Propper settings.
Meet them where they are. Price tag with the word “developers” on it. Learn their terminology.
Advise in a language they understand.
Laura Moller – Web and Native App Digital Accessibility Together?
Caricature of Laura speaking.
Provide a safe space to learn.
Separate web and app development. Exclamation mark warning sign. They have very different features. Web and App – developmental speed differences.
New Ally Access Model.
Inclusive design. A sheet of paper with different shapes on it. Tech sheet! Lighten the load.
We provide guidance around aligning app & web functionality.
How will you review your processes to make change?
It’s part of everyone’s responsibility. Incremental changes and review. Keep evolving.
Gian Wild – Mobile Accessibility: Testing Mobile Sites and Native Apps for Accessibility
Caricature of Gian saying “Reach out to us if you need assistance”.
4 main testing methods on mobile devices. Maturing tech methodology.
Don’t use simulators. Exclamation mark warning sign. A pile of stinking rubbish. Test real devices in real places. An iPhone and an iPad – test differently. Use ‘Chrome’ if you can – and Android.
WCAG2 – Test with this!
Identify site-type variations.
What functionality is critical?
Define & Prioritise. What completely fails the experience if it’s absent?
Traps – Deal with them all and move to mobile interaction.
What’s the accessible alternative so you can complete tasks? Touch gestures, another button, link etc. All info on one page. Two hands using a mobile phone.
Erin McIlroy – Building a Design Ally, Not a Robot
Caricature of Erin saying “My first time speaking on stage! Yayyyy! I didn’t want to become an AI expert, but the possibilities were compelling”.
Canva… We want to empower our designers. Co-designing with designers. How would they need to use it?
I’ve done more than I thought possible.
I created Little Ally – it knows our processes & questions. A genuine GPT (custom). Knowledge was co-written with AI for AI!
It knows about our bugs! An AI robot pointing and saying “Don’t fall into those traps!”
We needed people from our accessibility team to make sure it did what it should Lots of hands sticking out from the text.
Engage AI as a thought partner when developing AI!
Meet designers where they are. Driving adoption, not just building tools!
Let’s focus on the things humans do best! Sooo much power!
Sketch Group logo. Captured with Heart symbol on Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung land by @SketchGrp.
A11y Camp 2025 Day 2 – Part 3
Panel Discussion – Reading the Tea Leaves: The future of Accessibility
The next 5 – 10 years?
A green lawn and a pathway leading to a university building. Universities adopt accessibility education across the board.
AI Coding everything in industry! Robots! Whose job will be safe? Cleaning, booking travel. A robot named Raven doing laundry.
Who gets left behind? First nations? Intersectional? Some are using AI to close the ‘gap’.
Can AI do nuance and intuitive testing? …Not yet… Real people required. Gen AI can …read screens & drive cars. Human centred? Billions of lines of code – how can we keep up with the content?
Training everyone is so expensive. When is the rug-pull? …and by who? A robot arm pulling the rug out from beneath a pair of human feet.
AI could allow us to find the time to deal with AI and help us not surrender to our AI overlords.
There will be complaints & evolution on a complex journey to freeing up humans to do meaningful work.
Support those who can’t access the technology. A person with a can, stooped over with their hand on their back.
FaceTime is encrypted. If you want to review family confidential info. Exclamation mark warning sign. Don’t hand over confidential info to unsecured sites. An agent reviewing your data. Agent vs human intervention – when???
AI garbage in, garbage out. How do we create tools to bring jobs? Quality assurance – solving these problems in every home. Where’s our role?
Stephen Reid – When Accessibility Becomes Your Primary Design Strategy
Caricature of Stephen saying “NZ way of saying disability… Whaikai means to be strong, to be resilient, determined. Flipping the script.”
25% of NZ population live with disability. We have a dedicated parliamentary ministry, Whaikaha. Viewed with cynicism due to a history of disregard.
A construction barrier with the words “emotional barriers” on it and an arrow that says “Overcoming” pointing to the barrier.
This process really shifted our way of brand development: colour, typography, space.
Maori & non Maori world views connecting to form our brand. Creative leaps early on. Dancing feet. Symbolic ~ poetic. Strong in the warmth of the sun.
Flourish together. A growing plant. Fundamental principles for a world where we all thrive. Co-design with users & those affected. Nothing about us, without us.
A design foundation always present and flexible – everything shifted.
Ina Tsvetkova – Your Post is Cool, But is it Accessible and Inclusive?
Caricature of Ina saying “You can make a difference and you don’t need to be an expert!”
We can write in a way, avoiding jargon & confusing language.
Don’t use letter spacing and upside-down stuff.
Skip unnecessary details.
Images – be concise. Complete with linked descriptions. AI descriptions. An exclamation mark caution sign – be cautious. It’s a good starting point but it doesn’t understand the image the way you do! A small animal poking its head out of a hole with a question mark next to its head.
Consider colour blindness. Good contrast helps everyone.
Video: Avoid flashing lights. A lightbulb giving off jagged light. No more than 3 per second! Can cause nausea.
Motion? Provide epilepsy warnings.
When in doubt, use slow moving or static images.
Captioning, links with context, #hashtags, separate from content and provide descriptions.
Emojis. Heart eye emoji next to exclamation mark caution sign. Don’t overdo it! Or use them at the end.
Start small, be consistent. Accessibility is a habit!
Sketch Group logo. Captured with Heart symbol on Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung land by @SketchGrp.
A11y Camp 2025 Day 2 – Part 4
Nathan Ortiz – Designing for More than Data: A Trans Perspective on Digital Accessibility and Identity.
Caricature of Nathan speaking.
Personalisation can hurt, misrepresenting who we are! We’ve been here, we are here, we’ll be here. Indigenous societies celebrated trans people.
Trans is not a disability. Gender dysphoria – legal complexity – developers will misuse data.
Assumptions. Sex and gender are different concepts. Decouple.
Can be a safety issue. Old name being disclosed publicly. Accused of fraud! Privacy breaches for trans people more often.
Person wearing a dress with a flower on it, with a red X next to the person. Targeted for misrepresentation. Misgendering – mental health toll.
Fixing inflexible systems will be better for everyone.
Include us in accessibility research to avoid harming users. Intersectionality is all part of it.
Natasha Ballantyne – Humanity-Centred Desing: Designing with Vulnerability
Caricature of Natasha saying “Having a disability means experiencing barriers in a world not made for you!”
Design systems for it! Vulnerability is about the systems around you, designing safe spaces around you. Support networks contribute to lessening vulnerability.
Health, loneliness, homelessness, unemployment, proximity to help. A hand raised in the air seeking help.
Justice is what we’re searching for. A person in wheelchair attached with a chain to the wall of a bus. Chained up on the bus! What can we do about this?
Cartoon map of Australia with sad face, and a red X next to it. We have the 3rd lowest trust levels in the world re: media & information. Government info, tech & online scams, preying on vulnerable people.
WDYLL Beware. Exclamation mark warning sign. Image generation to extort from you. Crime syndicates.
Who are your real users – and how do you engage? Go to where they are and ask them to share their stories. Provide a guide page to help them be and feel safe. Written document illustration.
We are in a position of power, rightly or wrongly.
Establish exclusive engagement rules from the start.
Communicate how everyone in the room made a difference. Three people sitting on chairs in conversation.
The biggest opportunity is the gap you can fill! Hand raised with a pointing finger. Let’s make humanity a better place.
Sketch Group logo. Captured with Heart symbol on Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung land by @SketchGrp.