Workshops

25 November 2026 – 9AM

AI systems are built on a fantasy of the “normal” user — someone who moves through the world without friction, whose body and mind require no accommodation. Disabled people have never waited for institutions to design for them; adaptation, workaround, and self-built infrastructure are already a core disabled practice.

This workshop treats AI as the latest tool in that tradition. Working individually or in small groups, attendees will use Claude hands-on to design a practical tool, workaround, or process that addresses a specific access barrier in their work, advocacy, or daily life: building the adjustment they actually need, rather than the accommodation an institution is willing to grant. Attendees leave with a working artifact and a repeatable approach for building more.

Learning objectives

By the end of this workshop, attendees will be able to:

• Explain how crip theory reframes AI’s relationship to disability — from a compliance and accessibility-features lens to a structural design question — and identify where current AI development still assumes a “normal” user.
• Use Claude hands-on to build a practical tool or workaround that addresses a real access barrier in their work, advocacy, or daily life, and that they can take away and keep using.
• Apply a working framework for assessing whether a given AI tool or system expands disabled autonomy or extracts from it, and for negotiating self-determined adjustments rather than requesting sanctioned ones.

25 November 2026 – 1:30PM

Applying the Neurodiversity Design System’s principles to real-world design scenarios. Working through practical exercises, participants will explore what each principle actually means when applied to live design decisions, moving from abstract guidance to concrete choices about layout, typography, interaction, and content. Suited to practitioners who want to leave with a working understanding of how to apply the NDS in their own projects, not just a conceptual overview.

Attendees will leave with:

1. A working understanding of the NDS principles – not just what they are, but what they’re asking you to consider at each design decision point.
2. Hands-on experience applying the principles to a real scenario – so you leave having actually used the system, not just heard about it.
3. A starting framework for bringing the NDS into your own work – practical reference points you can take back and apply to your next project straight away.

25 November 2026 – 1:30PM

AI can turn ideas into working software faster than ever. It can also create inaccessible software just as fast.

An accessibility skill can help with that. It can package accessibility principles, acceptance criteria, verification tooling and more into instructions the AI follows, so accessibility is built in by default.

This is a practical, hands-on session to help you build more accessible software with AI. You’ll build a prototype with no skill applied, check it for accessibility problems, discuss the problems as a group, then rebuild the same prompt with an accessibility skill applied and see what changes.

Same tool, same prompt, different (more accessible) output.

Along the way, we’ll cover what a skill is and what makes a good one. We’ll show where skills deliver measurable improvements, and where AI still falls short and human review is essential. We’ll also show how to use skills in your own workflow, and how they bring wider benefits, like more accessible prototypes you can test with users earlier.

You’ll leave able to improve AI-generated websites before inaccessible patterns become product decisions, and with skills you can put to use straight away.

You’ll leave knowing:

1. Where AI goes wrong. The common accessibility issues AI tools introduce or miss, and why.
2. What a good skill looks like. What a skill is, what makes a good one, where it improves output and where human review is still needed.
3. How to apply this yourself. Practical ways to apply accessibility skills earlier.