May 20th, 2021 marks the tenth Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD).
We invite designers, developers, usability professionals, and everyone else to join us for a "Optimizing UX for Users with Disabilities" technical talk with Wendy Durica, Lead Engineer at Kantar and Accessibility Advocate and Sheri Byrne-Haber, Accessibility Architect at VMware.

Sheri Byrne-Haber is a prominent global subject matter expert in the fields of disability and accessibility in the business and educational settings. She is best known for launching digital accessibility programs at multiple Fortune 200 companies, including McDonald’s, Albertsons, and VMware, as well as consulting on government accessibility.

Sheri’s award-winning Medium blog summarizes legal cases and issues facing people implementing accessibility programs, with over 200,000 readers since its launch. Sheri is a frequent panelist and speaker at accessibility related conferences and an active member of several accessibility committees and non-profits, helping drive and communicate the evolution of accessibility standards.

Her book, titled "Giving a damn about accessibility" can be downloaded for free from accessibility.uxdesign.cc.

Wendy Durica is a member of the North America I&D Steering Committee, I&D in Tech committee, and various employee resource groups, including Kantar’s Women in Tech (which she co-founded in 2017). In 2019, with four technology degrees already under her belt, Wendy decided to return to school once again to get her professional SHRM certification in I&D from Cornell University. She is regularly invited to speak at external events, has recently been awarded for her community outreach, and is now proud to represent Kantar as a member of the Grace Hopper Software Engineering Executive Board.

Agenda

6:15 PM: Connect and Network

6:25 PM: Optimizing UX for Users with Disabilities

Sheri Byrne-Haber, Accessibility Architect at VMware and Wendy Durica, Lead Engineer at Kantar and Accessibility Advocate will discuss the critical importance of website accessibility with a focus on customization and personalization in a technical talk in honor of Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD)

6:55 PM: Networking, Closing Comments & Prizes

We'll use Live Caption in Chrome for our event.

You can turn on Live Caption for media you play in Chrome.

Live Caption is only available in English.

On your computer, open Chrome Chrome.

At the top right, select More More and then Settings.

At the bottom of the Settings page, click Advanced.

Under “Accessibility,” turn on Live Caption.