Axe-Con was March 15 & 16. Axe-Con is the world’s largest digital accessibility conference and is held annually by Deque. Here are a few take a ways from the event.

Are you Inclusive?

Denis Boudreau of inklusiv asks "Are you really as "inclusive" as you think you are?"
He pointed out that we may be inadvertently leaving people out.

26% Of working-age Americans identified as having one or
more disabilities. If you're giving a talk can the audience hear you without a mic? Can they read your slides?

He has a Speaker self assessment quiz to check on how inclusive your talks are. He also announced the release of his book The Inclusive Speaker. It's on Kindle for $1.99.

Ageism in Interfaces.

Alex Tait of atfreshsolutions.com talked about Ageism in interfaces. She pointed out that ageism can occur in designs.

Here are some stats she mentioned.

1. ⅓ of seniors have hearing loss.
2. ⅓ of seniors have vision loss.
3. ⅓ of seniors have serious mobility limitations.
4. 40% of seniors have a cognitive impairment.

She has more resources on her site. At Fresh Solutions.

Essential Accessibility Annotations

Carie Fisher of Testlio talked about making accessibility notes on designs so the developers understand the accessibility choices made in the design.

Sixty-seven percent of WCAG guideline can be met in the design phase of a project. A repeated theme of Axe-Com was Shifting Accessibility Left in a project timeline. So moving it to an early in the design phase so it is always there and not added later.

The need to “shift left”

Michele A. Williams spoke extensively on the topic, Her talk Research through broken lenses: The need to “shift left” in UXR was full of great in sights. Here are the highlights.

"True inclusion isn’t bolted on at the end, it’s built in from the beginning."

"Time estimates are based on intention."

Won’t it take more time to add accessibility to a project. Not if it's part of the plan at the start. So shift it left in the plan.

Conclusion

Axe-Con was great this year. There was great information. Please follow these people and learn more.