Blogs, meet-ups and people to follow

Introduction

Developing your accessibility knowledge can also involve learning from others.
It helps to:

• hear from others in the accessibility community about what they’ve done and learned
• learn from disabled people and their lived experiences
• keep learning new topics and any changes to guidance

This can be through blogs, events, meet-ups, and even on Twitter.

Accessibility twitter list

Find below some of the events and blogs we recommend.

Accessibility London meetup

Accessibility London is a community of welcoming and friendly made up of:

• people with lived experiences of disability
• accessibility professionals, user researchers and user experience professionals, visual designers, content designers, developers
• accessibility advocates

And more! We highly recommend going to the Accessibility London meetup if you can. The meetups focus on:

• digital products
• digital services
• the built environment

This is across public, private and charitable sectors. They host a range of speakers with experience of accessibility and disability. It’s also a great opportunity to chat to others who are also learning more or experts in the area.

Accessibility London meetup

If you’re not able to join the live event, they record all the talks and put them on their YouTube channel. You can also browse older talks.

Accessibility London on YouTube

They’re also on Twitter sharing articles and accessibility tips.

@A11yLondon

Disabled people’s lived experiences and voices

There are a lot of disabled stories out there that can help you learn more about the barriers people face. Hearing people’s experiences can help you to develop your understanding of accessibility.

Below are some writers who share both lived experience of disability and accessibility.

Spaced Out and Smiling

Jamie Knight is a developer, writer, and public speaker. He works for the BBC as a senior accessibility specialist.

Spaced out and Smiling is a site that shares the experiences of Jamie and Lion. They have an ASD diagnoses and focus on autism related things. There are lots of great articles, from reviews to tips.

We recommend reading the article about cognitive accessibility. This is from a presentation Jamie and Lion gave about their experiences and what works for them.

Cognitive Accessibility 103 (Spaced Out and Smiling blog)

tink.uk

Léonie Watson is a big contributor to the accessibility community. She mentors young people interested in the fields of accessibility and inclusive design. She’s also:

• Director of TetraLogical
• a member of the W3C Advisory Board
• co-Chair of the W3C Web Applications Working Group
• a member of the BIMA Inclusive Design Council

Léonie does talks about web standards and pushing the boundaries of inclusive design.

Her website tink.uk offers a range of articles on accessibility related topics.

Molly Watt Talks

Molly Watt is a usability and accessibility consultant. She specialises in assistive technology and design for those with sensory impairment. Molly is also a public speaker. She covers topics from raising awareness of Usher Syndrome to assistive tech and accessible design.

Molly shares her experiences of having Usher Syndrome and accessibility on her blog. Usher syndrome is a dual sensory impairment, and a form of deafblindess.

Molly Watt Talks

Disabled voices

There are lots of other disabled voices that are worth checking out. We’ve put together a list of our favourite disabled bloggers in the UK.

Disabled bloggers to follow in 2021 (Scope for business)

You can also follow this ‘Disabled voices’ list on Twitter.

Disabled voices list (Twitter)

Accessibility guidance and learnings from GOV.UK

GOV.UK and Government Digital Service have done a lot to improve accessibility. This includes their website and services. There’s lots of content on what they’ve learned along the way as well as general guidance.

Accessibility in government blog

They also have a series of interviews with people with access needs. These offer insight into the different experiences people have. They also talk about the different technology people use.

‘Accessibility and me’ series (GOV accessibility blog)

This post offers some background to how they designed DVSA’s strategy for the web to be inclusive of all users.

How the DVSA strategy report was written for the web (GOV blog)