IA Summit 2018

In about a month, I’ll be presenting my talk, What Letter Are You? An Alphabet of Accessibility, to the IA Summit. It’s in Chicago this year, and looks to be a fantastic conference.

Here’s the synopsis:


Every one of us needs the internet to be accessible. Our needs may not surface today, but they will in the future. Do we know enough about what accessibility needs look like — beyond the stereotypes of people with disabilities that we’re all too aware of? And how do we get from “I know my site has problems” to “I know how to approach them?”

This talk, based on Anne’s 2014 articles “An Alphabet of Accessibility Issues” and “Reframing Accessibility for the Web” will frame accessibility through the lens of 26 people who need accessibility considerations. It will cover:

  • Four broad categories of accessibility needs that we must be aware of: visual, auditory, physical, and cognitive and neurological.
  • Twenty-six people who need us to design accessibly. Some of them you’ll recognize as being disabled, and some of them may come as a surprise.
  • An approach for designing accessibly by concentrating on the functional changes we can bring to our project work.
  • Emphasis on keyboard use, images, and forms.

Attendees will learn about accessibility issues, both common and surprising, and leave with a framework for approaching accessibility problems based on what websites need to do instead of based on what people can’t do.


It’s the same talk I presented at World IA Day on February 20th, so if you didn’t get a chance to see it locally and you’ll be in Chicago, I’d be honored if you’d attend.

You can use the discount code ‘IAS18SPEAKER’ to take $50 off the final registration cost, and register at http://www.iasummit.org/registration/