talks.html

---
layout: page
title: Talks
id: talks
description: We are super excited about the lineup of talks for this year, get ready to join us on October 22nd and 23rd, 2026.
---

<p>We are super excited about the lineup of talks for this year, <a href="https://tickets.a11yto.com/e/36">get ready to join us</a> on October 22nd and 23rd, 2026.</p>

<section class="talk">
  <h2 id="Smells-Like-Shift-Spirit" class="talk-title">Smells Like Shift Spirit</h2>
  <div class="talk-desc">
    <p>Smells Like Shift Spirit cranks accessibility up from background noise to the main stage. If your team has been stuck in the “Shift Left” grunge era, all distortion, no distribution, this session shows you how to tune up, plug in, and actually play together. We’ll break down why old approaches fell flat, introduce a more collaborative “Shift Out” sound, and give every role in your org three concrete moves they can start riffing with on Monday. No theory solos, no compliance ballads, just practical, loud‑and‑clear accessibility you can feel. Come ready to turn the amps up. We're going to 11!</p>
  </div>
  <section class="speaker">
    <h3 id="Jason-Thompson" class="speaker-name">Jason Thompson</h3>
    <img class="speaker-image" loading="lazy" src="/assets/speakers/Jason-Thompson_300x300.jpg" alt="Jason-Thompson's Headshot" width="300" height="300">
    <div class="speaker-bio">
      <p>Jason is a Lead Digital Accessibility Specialist focused on strategy, helping organizations move beyond compliance to build sustainable, scalable accessibility practices. With a background in development and hands-on testing, he bridges the gap between technical execution and organizational change&ndash;turning accessibility from a checkbox into a capability.</p>
    </div>
  </section>
</section>

<section class="talk">
  <h2 id="Beyond-the-div" class="talk-title no-caps">Beyond The &lt;div&gt;: Elevating React Testing Library (RTL) Tests with Accessible, Semantic Markup</h2>
  <div class="talk-desc">
    <p>Why do so many unit tests rely on brittle test IDs or complex text queries? The secret to resilient tests lies in the bedrock of the web: semantic HTML. When we build with the right HTML elements, we inherently construct a robust accessibility tree that React Testing Library (RTL) can leverage.</p>
  </div>
  <section class="speaker">
    <h3 id="Fabian-Herrera" class="speaker-name">Fabian Herrera</h3>
    <img class="speaker-image" loading="lazy" src="/assets/speakers/Fabian-Herrera_300x300.jpg" alt="Fabian Herrera Headshot" width="300" height="300">
    <div class="speaker-bio">
      <p>Fabian Herrera is a Senior Software Engineer on the Core Front-end Platform team at Top Hat and a certified professional in web accessibility (CPWA). He is deeply passionate about digital accessibility, believing we should create seamless, delightful experiences for all end-users&ndash;not just products they merely tolerate. Beyond engineering, Fabian advocates for embedding inclusive design principles into our everyday internal communications and team culture.</p>
    </div>
  </section>
</section>

<section class="talk">
  <h2 id="Understanding-the-Accessibility-Tree" class="talk-title">Beyond the DOM: Understanding the Accessibility Tree</h2>
  <div class="talk-desc">
    <p>Many developers inspect the DOM (Document Object Model), but users using assistive technologies never actually interact with the DOM directly. In this session, we'll explore the browser's accessibility tree (in Chrome), how it is generated from HTML, CSS, and ARIA, and how it shapes the experience of screen reader users. Attendees will learn how to inspect accessibility trees in modern browser developer tools and gain a deeper understanding of how browsers communicate accessibility information.</p>
  </div>
  <section class="speaker">
    <h3 id="Jeremy-Rivera" class="speaker-name">Jeremy Rivera</h3>
    <img class="speaker-image" loading="lazy" src="/assets/speakers/Jeremy-Rivera_300x300.jpg" alt="Jeremy Rivera's Headshot" width="300" height="300">
    <div class="speaker-bio">
      <p>Jeremy Rivera is a Full-stack Software Engineer and Developer Advocate with extensive experience in writing and public speaking.  He is an active learner with an aptitude towards Cloud technologies such as AWS, Kubernetes and Salesforce.</p>
      <p>Jeremy holds a Certified Professional in Web Accessibility (CPWA) certification from the IAAP and has presented several talks on digital accessibility at conferences like A11yNYC, A11y San Diego, Tampa Devs, Axe-Con, DroidCon, and Accessibility Camp Bay Area.</p>
    </div>
  </section>
</section>

<section class="talk">
  <h2 id="The-A11y-of-Driving" class="talk-title">The A11y of Driving</h2>
  <div class="talk-desc">
    <p>As cars are becoming smartphones on wheels,  their interfaces still assume that drivers are young, sighted, and have both hands free. This session looks at how web and mobile accessibility principles can be applied to the automotive world. It will explore how smart vehicle automation can extend driving independence to disabled or aging drivers who would otherwise have to give up their keys.</p>
  </div>
  <section class="speaker">
    <h3 id="Claudio-Luis-Vera" class="speaker-name">Claudio Luís Vera</h3>
    <img class="speaker-image" loading="lazy" src="/assets/speakers/Claudio-Luis-Vera_300x300.jpg" alt="Claudio Luìs Vera's Headshot" width="300" height="300">
    <div class="speaker-bio">
      <p>Claudio Luís Vera is a digital accessibility consultant, speaker, and writer who explores how design and technology either enable or disable people. His work spans inclusive design, legal risk, assistive technology, and the ethics of AI. He has written for UX Collective and Smashing Magazine, spoken at CSUN, M-Enabling, and the ICT Symposium, and co-hosts Slop Happens, a podcast on the unintended consequences of technology.</p>
    </div>
  </section>
</section>

<section class="talk">
  <h2 id="The-Secret-Life-of-Bugs" class="talk-title">The Secret Life of Bugs</h2>
  <div class="talk-desc">
    <p>Not all bugs crash a game. Some quietly shape who gets to play. In modern game development, QA has become highly effective at identifying functional failures, issues that break systems, block progression, or violate defined requirements. But many accessibility issues don’t present this way. They live in the space between “working as designed” and “working for players.”</p>
    <p>This talk explores the “secret life” of these issues, reframing accessibility not as a compliance layer or a checklist, but as a critical lens for evaluating product quality. Attendees will leave with a practical framework for identifying accessibility gaps earlier, integrating player-centered validation into QA and product workflows, and treating accessibility signals with the same rigor as traditional bugs. Because if the system works, but the player can’t, it’s still broken.</p>
  </div>
  <section class="speaker">
    <h3 id="Dusty-Levenberg" class="speaker-name">Dusty Levenberg</h3>
    <img class="speaker-image" loading="lazy" src="/assets/speakers/Dusty-Levenberg_300x300.jpg" alt="Dusty Levenberg Headshot" width="300" height="300">
    <div class="speaker-bio">
      <p>Dusty Levenberg is an Accessibility Product Manager specializing in embedding inclusive design across complex digital ecosystems. Most recently at Riot Games, Dusty brings a background in compliance spanning startups, enterprise organizations, and government, bringing a systems-level perspective to accessibility that bridges regulatory requirements with player and user experience.</p>
    </div>
  </section>
</section>

<section class="talk">
  <h2 id="Quiz-time" class="talk-title">Quiz time! Does it Pass or Fail?</h2>
  <div class="talk-desc">
    <p>In this session, you get to take part! Instead of showing and telling, Lloydi will be presenting a series of gnarly edge cases from various WCAG SCs and ask the question: "Does this pass or fail this SC?" Votes will be cast live, and we'll see how people voted after each example. Expect to have some presumptions proven wrong as Lloydi gets into the nitty gritty of why each example passes or fails.</p>
  </div>
  <section class="speaker">
    <h3 id="Ian-Lloyd" class="speaker-name">Ian Lloyd</h3>
    <img class="speaker-image" loading="lazy" src="/assets/speakers/Ian-Lloyd_300x300.jpg" alt="Ian Lloyd's Headshot" width="300" height="300">
    <div class="speaker-bio">
      <p>Ian has been banging on about accessibility things since 2000 as a developer, in one form or another. He has spoken at CSUN, Pixel Pioneers (UK), and State of the Browser (UK). Ian creates tools and bookmarklets to help accessibility professionals, and other tools for developers in general. Ian also runs a11y-tools.com.</p>
    </div>
  </section>
</section>

<section class="talk">
  <h2 id="The-Ugly-of-AI-and-Accessibility" class="talk-title">The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of AI and Accessibility</h2>
  <div class="talk-desc">
    <p>No one doubts that AI is a transformative technology potentially on par with the Internet and mobile devices. What that means to you depends on whether you are using these new tools to build something or if you're the one using what is being built. Let's examine what makes AI a good tool to use, why it has some bad aspects we'll need to be mindful of, and we'll talk about the ugly parts that could cause more problems than its all worth.</p>
  </div>
  <section class="speaker">
    <h3 id="Justin-Stockton" class="speaker-name">Justin Stockton</h3>
    <img class="speaker-image" loading="lazy" src="/assets/speakers/Justin-Stockton_300x300.jpg" alt="Justin Stockton's Headshot" width="300" height="300">
    <div class="speaker-bio">
      <p>Justin brings a unique combination of technical depth, accessibility expertise, and product management experience to his work. Having walked the path from developer to accessibility engineer to product manager, he understands the challenges organizations face at every level. His approach to accessibility is pragmatic and results-oriented: he believes that sustainable accessibility programs require not just technical compliance, but cultural transformation, embedding accessibility into every phase of the development lifecycle, from initial design concepts through deployment and maintenance.</p>
    </div>
  </section>
</section>

<section class="talk">
  <h2 id="This-Is-Why-We-Cant-Have-Nice-Themes" class="talk-title">This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Themes (Modern CSS for Accessible Colors)</h2>
  <div class="talk-desc">
    <p>Accessible color systems often start with the best intentions: dark mode, high-contrast themes, and user preferences. But every new inclusive feature tends to pile on extra variables, manual contrast checks, and complex media query overrides. Before long, the architecture becomes so fragile and bloated that it breaks under its own weight … this is why we can’t have nice themes.</p>
    <p>Thankfully, modern browser engines can now handle much more heavy lifting. This practical, code-rich session will walk through real-world component refactors that prune redundant code, improve performance for all users, and make resilient, high-contrast interfaces much easier to support over the long term.</p>
  </div>
  <section class="speaker">
    <h3 id="James-Steinbach" class="speaker-name">James Steinbach</h3>
    <img class="speaker-image" loading="lazy" src="/assets/speakers/James-Steinbach_300x300.jpg" alt="James Steinbach Headshot" width="300" height="300">
    <div class="speaker-bio">
      <p>James Steinbach is a front-end engineer with more than 15 years of experience building websites and applications for organizations ranging from agencies to developer-platform companies. His work focuses on modern CSS, design systems, accessibility, web performance, and the ever-evolving capabilities of the browser platform. Throughout his career, James has been an advocate for writing front-end code that is both user-friendly and developer-friendly: fast, accessible, maintainable, and enjoyable to work with.</p>
    </div>
  </section>
</section>

<section class="talk">
  <h2 id="Less-Code-More-Access" class="talk-title">Less Code, More Access: Dialog, Popover, and Anchor Positioning</h2>
  <div class="talk-desc">
    <p>Modern browsers now ship with powerful, accessible building blocks that used to require piles of custom JavaScript and ARIA. This session shows how the native Dialog element, Popover API, and CSS Anchor Positioning deliver robust accessibility out of the box, with live examples and the gotchas to watch for.</p>
  </div>
<section class="speaker">
  <h2 id="Patrick-Fox" class="speaker-name">Patrick Fox</h2>
  <img class="speaker-image" loading="lazy" src="/assets/speakers/Patrick-Fox_300x300.jpg" alt="Patrick Fox's Headshot" width="300" height="300">
  <div class="speaker-bio">
    <p>With nearly 30 years of web development experience and 20 years in the marketing agency world, Patrick has partnered with dozens of Fortune 500 clients to craft digital experiences that are as accessible as they are elegant. A passionate advocate for accessibility-first thinking, Patrick brings a combination of technical depth and real-world scale to the challenges of modern UI development - always in pursuit of solutions that are simpler, more robust, and built to last.</p>
  </div>
</section>
</section>

<section class="talk">
  <h2 id="Good-Marketing-Is-Accessible" class="talk-title">Good Marketing Is Accessible</h2>
  <div class="talk-desc">
    <p>Marketing is about reaching new audiences, but marketing content can often introduce new barriers between customers with disabilities and your product. Is a barrier-free customer journey possible? From social media to marketing trailers to events, Jessica will share her journey driving Ubisoft’s industry-leading accessibility communications program, with practical tips on how to get organizational buy-in and create accessible marketing content.</p>
  </div>
  <section class="speaker">
    <h3 id="Jessica-Roache" class="speaker-name">Jessica Roache</h3>
    <img class="speaker-image" loading="lazy" src="/assets/speakers/Jessica-Roache_300x300.jpg" alt="Jessica Roache's Headshot" width="300" height="300">
    <div class="speaker-bio">
      <p>Jessica Roache is Senior Manager, Global Corporate Communications at Ubisoft, where she spearheads Ubisoft's global accessibility communications program. Driving this 360-degree initiative led to her recognition as winner of the 2023 GAConf "MVP Award for Unsung Hero," an award recognizing behind-the-scenes efforts with big impact. Working cross-functionally to embed accessibility in Ubisoft's communications, marketing and events across its games and services, Jessica's passion is to empower everyone to drive accessibility improvements in their own sphere of influence.</p>
    </div>
  </section>
</section>

<section class="talk">
  <h2 id="How-Low-Can-You-Go" class="talk-title">How Low Can You Go? Accessibility Before and After POST.</h2>
  <div class="talk-desc">
    <p>Most accessibility work begins once an operating system, desktop environment, or application is already running. But computers start much earlier than that.</p>
    <p>This talk explores accessibility across the boot chain, from power-on and firmware through bootloaders and into the operating system. Drawing from practical work bringing text-to-speech to UEFI environments, we'll examine what accessibility infrastructure exists today, where critical gaps remain, and what it would take to make computing accessible from the moment a machine is turned on.</p>
    <p>Attendees will gain an introduction to low-level accessibility, firmware and bootloader challenges, and opportunities for future work below the application layer.</p>
  </div>
  <section class="speaker">
    <h3 id="Tait-Hoyem" class="speaker-name">Tait Hoyem</h3>
    <img class="speaker-image" loading="lazy" src="/assets/speakers/Tait-Hoyem_300x300.jpg" alt="Tait Hoyem's Headshot" width="300" height="300">
    <div class="speaker-bio">
      <p>Tait Hoyem is a Computer Science graduate looking to make accessibility better at its technical core: building AT protocols, efficient screen readers, and firmware-level TTS capabilities. Tait’s goal is to get technology out of your way so that you can build what you want.</p>
    </div>
  </section>
</section>

<section class="talk">
  <h2 id="The-High-Wire-Act" class="talk-title">The High Wire Act: How Craft Makes Accessibility Invisible</h2>
  <div class="talk-desc">
    <p>Audio Description performers for film and TV walk a wire. Overdone, and you break the mood. Too little and you leave someone behind. Get it right and the audience forgets you were ever there. Roy Samuelson has recorded thousands of hours of Audio Description for Disney+, Netflix, FX, Hulu, and Max. He brings that craft lens to digital accessibility, showing what genuine inclusion looks like when it stops being a checklist and starts being a performance.</p>
  </div>
  <section class="speaker">
    <h3 id="Roy-Samuelson" class="speaker-name">Roy Samuelson</h3>
    <img class="speaker-image" loading="lazy" src="/assets/speakers/Roy-Samuelson_300x300.jpg" alt="Roy Samuelson's Headshot" width="300" height="300">
    <div class="speaker-bio">
      <p>Roy Samuelson ensures blind people enjoy watching videos. He holds a patent portfolio in Audio Description, authored A Voice Actor's Guide to Audio Description Performance, and hosts The ADNA Presents podcast. Through Parity Endeavors, he consults with media and technology companies on human vs. AI voice decisions and how to build accessibility into production from the start. He treats accessibility as storycraft, not compliance.</p>
    </div>
  </section>
</section>

<section class="talk">
  <h2 id="The-Aesthetic-A11y-Paradox" class="talk-title">The Aesthetic-A11y Paradox: Taming the Visual Prowess of Modern LLMs for Born-Accessible Code</h2>
  <div class="talk-desc">
    <p>Modern Large Language Models (LLMs) have developed a sophisticated eye for visual design. However, this rapid advancement in visual styling capabilities introduces a new engineering challenge: the Aesthetic-A11y Paradox. When models focus heavily on achieving rich visual presentation, the underlying semantic markup and keyboard interactions can sometimes be overlooked.</p>
    <p>In this talk, we share insights from a longitudinal study of 99 distinct UI components generated across 20 rounds of AI model iterations. We will analyze how default model outputs behave when balancing complex visual designs (such as gradients, custom interactive widgets, and complex grids) against core WCAG criteria.</p>
  </div>
  <section class="speaker">
    <h3 id="Dirk-Ginader" class="speaker-name">Dirk Ginader</h3>
    <img class="speaker-image" loading="lazy" src="/assets/speakers/Dirk-Ginader_300x300.jpg" alt="Dirk Ginader's Headshot" width="300" height="300">
    <div class="speaker-bio">
      <p>Dirk Ginader is Accessibility Engineering Lead at Google in Zurich. For the last year he focused strongly how AI generated Frontend code can be produced as accessible as possible. He has been active in the field of accessibility for over 25 years and also speaks regularly at conferences and workshops on this topic. </p>
    </div>
  </section>
</section>

<section class="talk">
  <h2 id="Pocket-Full-of-Lint" class="talk-title">Pocket Full of Lint: A Developer's Guide to Accessibility Testing</h2>
  <div class="talk-desc">
    <p>What if you could stop accessibility bugs before they're even written? No audits. No last-minute scrambles. No "we'll fix it later" because there's nothing to fix. Sounds too good to be true? It's not. ESLint (the tool probably sitting in your project already) is the most underutilized accessibility weapon in frontend development. In this session we'll deep-dive advanced ESLint configurations that close every escape hatch, and unlock the full power of jsx-a11y to do serious preventative heavy-lifting. Walk away with techniques you can implement today and your codebase will never be the same.</p>
  </div>
  <section class="speaker">
    <h3 id="Gerard-K-Cohen" class="speaker-name">Gerard K. Cohen</h3>
    <img class="speaker-image" loading="lazy" src="/assets/speakers/placeholder-headshot_170x170.png" alt="Placeholder Headshot" width="170" height="170">
    <div class="speaker-bio">
      <p>Over the past decade, Gerard has built and advised accessibility teams that have impacted hundreds of millions of individuals worldwide. His experience spans from supporting commercial financial applications responsible for transferring trillions of dollars globally, to leading accessibility at pre-Elon Twitter, and helped to drive accessibility for the Atlassian Design System, where he collaborated with a team of exceptional designers and engineers at Atlassian to enhance the accessibility of components that power productivity tools like Jira, Confluence, and Trello. </p>
    </div>
  </section>
</section>