Accessibility Festival – sketch of the event

It’s hard to forget about great events on the accessibility map, that’s why we keep revisiting memories of the Accessibility Festival – a meeting organized by us for you, which took place on March 20th at the beautiful Zendesk office in Krakow.

The Idea of the Accessibility Festival

If you follow us on social media channels, such as LinkedIn, you probably know that we’ve been working intensively on a project we called “Accessibility Festival – together towards inclusivity!”. We wanted to create a space for you to come together, to familiarize you with topics related to accessibility and inclusivity by inviting speakers who are active in the local community and working to improve digital accessibility. Krakow was the perfect place to put our plans into action and organize the festival’s first stop.

Together in Accessibility with Zendesk

Accessibility is a shared responsibility that unites entire communities, as evidenced by our partnership with Zendesk, which provided the space of their modern office for the duration of the Festival and supported us in its organization. We are very pleased that the idea of spreading the topic of accessibility and inclusivity creates opportunities for collaboration on so many levels.

This memorable festival stop

We couldn’t have picked a better day for the Accessibility Festival. Krakow had beautiful weather, perfect for such gatherings. Everything indicated that it would be successful, and it was exactly so!

With our hearts on our sleeves, we started, still somewhat shocked by how many of you joined us, coming from different parts of Poland. You gave us wings!

The Accessibility Festival is about sharing knowledge

We handed the microphone to the Speakers, who presented many interesting topics, sharing their knowledge and perspectives on accessibility and inclusivity.

Marcin Krzanicki – Hurt your personas
Marcin’s lecture on how harming personas during a project can prevent harm to real users. Marcin’s great statement that accessibility is like an imperfect verb, something that cannot be closed in one action, but is a constant process of improvement, stayed with us. Marcin also proved that you don’t need slides to captivate your audience! 😉

Agnieszka Książek and Piotr Ćwierz – OWiT Kraków-Gorlice as support places for people with disabilities and testing of assistive technologies
Agnieszka and Piotr introduced us to the world of solutions used by people with disabilities, showing many possibilities for improvement and support. The unconventional technologies they presented, including MÓWiK – a tablet facilitating communication through pictures, showed how much can be done to support people with various needs.

OWiT stand
Between the lectures, there was also an opportunity to get to know and test almost 30 supporting solutions offered by OWiT Kraków-Gorlice for people with disabilities. The stand attracted a lot of interest!

Piotr Źrołka – Sneaking around the network, or competitions in measuring accessibility
Despite being remote, Piotr provided a huge amount of knowledge about data related to digital accessibility and pointed out the significant demand for such research in Poland to properly support and understand the need for accessibility.

Barbara Filipowska, Agata Tumidajewicz – Qualitative qualitative research
Basia and Agata’s exceptional lecture presented good practices for conducting research with users with disabilities. Their perspective and experience shared are a step towards increasing researchers’ awareness of conducting research with people with disabilities and raising awareness of how important it is to involve this group of users to have a real impact on improving accessibility in solutions they use daily.

People of the Accessibility Festival

That’s you! Participants who positively surprise us with questions, commitment, and such a large presence during the Accessibility Festival. And even though we dedicated time to networking to answer your questions, we’re glad you’re open to new perspectives, as many of you mentioned during the event.

The Accessibility Festival will remain an important event for us for a long time, not only because we organized it, but also because it showed the power of a community interested in real improvements in accessibility and inclusivity around us!

Thank you for that, and see you soon!