Connecting accessibility advocates to share strategies, stories, and solutions

Everyone Welcome: Web Accessibility as an Opportunity
Speaker: René Drummer

René framed accessibility as both a growth lever and a compliance requirement. He highlighted the European Accessibility Act timeline and the need for WCAG conformance and a public accessibility statement. He contrasted quick‑fix widgets with fully integrated, standards‑based accessibility baked into design and code emphasising.

The Power of Storytelling and Being Human
Speaker: Carmen Burghardt

Carmen focused on how to build momentum for accessibility from the inside out. She defined the Accessibility Champion role and what it entails crafting a business case, building relationships and communities, running awareness sessions, continuous learning. Acknowledged typical hurdles like slow influence, shifting priorities, the need for executive buy‑in. She also offered practical behaviors that keep progress sustainable and collaborative, like celebrating small wins, take incremental steps, and done is better than perfect.

Testing the accessibility of your app
Speaker: Mike Slinkman

Mike covered why mobile accessibility matters (over 1 billion people live with a disability, ~50% use accessibility features). He walked through a pragmatic test strategy that combines manual testing, automated tools, and user testing. He wrapped with six quick checks any team can run on their app: orientation support, minimum touch‑target size, meaningful labels/alt text, proper semantic headings, and text scaling to 200% without truncation or overlap.