Accessibility Days 2020
The biggest Italian awareness-raising event about Accessibility and Inclusivity of digital technologies.
Online streaming, May 22-23 2020
What are the Accessibility Days?
The Accessibility Days is a a yearly event that aims at raising awareness on accessibility and disability issues for software developers, designers, makers, content editors, and many others involved in digital technologies.
The event will be held during the "Global Accessibility Awareness Day" (GAAD), a yearly event organized in many locations worldwide that aims at raising awareness about accessibility and inclusion, by gathering up together technology experts and disabled people.
The Accessibility Days are now in their fourth edition. This year should have been hosted in the Institute of the Blind in Milan, but the emergency health situation forced us to reorganize ourselves to carry it out online, in live streaming.
Accessibility is too important an issue to give up and say superficially "oh well, we will talk about Accessibility Days next year". Indeed, precisely in these days of emergency, if we have a chance to continue to carry out at least part of our activities, which relate to work, study, or to keep in contact with family, friends and the rest of the world, we owe above all to digital technologies, which allow us to carry them out remotely.
As human beings, we have a duty, at least moral, to commit ourselves to ensuring that the right to use these digital technologies is guaranteed to everyone. And as Accessibility Days, which purpose is to raise awareness on the issue of accessibility and disabilities for those involved in digital technologies, we certainly cannot back down!
Event Contents
During the event we will have a series of initiatives. Below we are listing the different types:
Conference
More than 30 sessions on accessibility topics: from what are the tools available in everyday life for users with disabilities, to how technologies can help us to design and develop more usable digital products and services. Always keeping in mind the different legislative aspects that regulate accessibility.
Labs
There will be workshops where we can do practical activities to understand how to best create Web sites, apps or electronic devices, with the support of experts in various technologies and with the opportunity to confront with disabled users, to understand whether they are really accessible.
The Maker Angle
Developers and designers play a key role in improving the quality of life of people with disabilities, as they are the makers, with their creations! We have tools that make possible things that were deemed unthinkable until just a few years ago: There are electronic cards available to everyone, sensors, or 3D printers, just to name a few. In this corner we will give free rein to the imagination, to experiment how to use these tools to create a more "accessible" world.
Audio-Game Station
In the last edition we already talked about audio-games, entertainment products that can also be enjoyed by people with visual disabilities. This year we will have the opportunity to play and try them personally in a location used for this purpose. It will be very interesting to understand how situations that we would normally imagine with a strong visual component, such as a duel between virtual enemies, can be reinterpreted by doing it without the sense of sight.
Round Table: Accessible Music
During the last day on Saturday we will be organizing a roundtable where we will talk about the current situation regarding accessibility of software for the creation of music. Different musical software applications will be analyzed and you will be challenged to understand first-hand the strengths and weaknesses of each of them.
Information Points + Ask the Expert
In addition to the opportunity to confront experienced people of the various topics discussed during the event (Ask The Expert), there will be information points in which representatives of the different institutions that support this Accessibility Days edition can provide Information about their activities and answer any questions you may have.
A Sensory
Experience
Past editions have embedded a great deal of enthusiasm among all the participants, thanks to the numerous initiatives that were organized: not only the classic sessions, but also the workshops, such as the Maker's Corner, and other real "sensory" experiences, such as the visit to the Tactile Museum or the Dinner in the Dark.
A summary of the vortex of emotions generated during those days was collected in this post.
Would you like to become a Sponsor of the Event?
Accessibility Days is a free event organized by non-profit associations. You can help us pay for the organization with a small financial contribution. We have defined a series of sponsorship levels, which can be consulted on this page.
Contact us at: accessibilitydays@gmail.com and we'll tell you how you can help us support the event and make it even better!