Unmasking Accessibility: Moving Beyond a Band-Aid Solution

Unmasking Accessibility:  Moving Beyond a Band-Aid Solution

Overview: 

Accessibility shouldn't be like the duct tape the plumber slaps on your pipework to cover leaky cracks.  The plumber may apply the expert fix for an issue on one house call, but does not transfer to you, the homeowner, the skills to address the next leak yourself.  The plumber has a role to play in your house.  However, if you don’t maintain your own pipework, the plumber will need to be called again and again. You’re fixing a problem, but not addressing the situation.

A common misconception is that accessibility is a single, stand-alone project.  However, in order to succeed, evidence shows that you must take a closer look at implementing accessibility into your organization's business processes, across all of your roles – CEO, marketing specialists, user experience designers, content writers, developers, testers and your support team.

Participants will learn:

• The role-based responsibilities related to accessibility
• How collaboration makes things happen faster and more effectively
• How to identify opportunities to promote inclusion and to remove barriers to accessibility - which results in better products and services
• Achieve sustainability through capacity-building

Speaker Bios:

Pina D'Intno is a sought-after consultant and speaker who actively promotes accessibility and inclusion from both executive-level and grassroots perspectives by bridging the view points and needs of the organization, employees, and customers to establish best-practices environments.

Pina was the Founder and co-Chair of the Canadian Financial Institute on Assistive Technologies (CFIAT); active member of Job Opportunity Information Network (JOIN), Honorary Chair of Financial Services for G3ict, and Advisor on several AODA reviews and initiatives. She is a certified PMI member, and holds a master's degree in Design in Inclusive Design (MDes) from OCADU.

Jennifer Chadwick is a regular invited speaker at conferences including CSUN at University of California, #a11yTO and DEEP at Inclusive Design Research Centre (IRDC) in Toronto, the United Nation's M-Enabling Summit in Washington and AccessU in Texas.  In 2018 she participated in the Conference of State Parties on the Persons with Disabilities (UN COSP) in the United Nations' General Assembly.