David Sloan: So, welcome to the State of Accessibility podcast from Vespero. I'm David Sloan, Chief Accessibility Officer for Vispero, and each month in the podcast, I'm joined by a guest or two to discuss a topic of interest and relevance to the practice and profession of digital accessibility.
David Sloan: And for episode 17, for March, we're reviewing the 2026 CSUN Assistive Technology Conference.
David Sloan: Which was held last week, in Anaheim, California.
David Sloan: Hosted by California State University of Northridge.
David Sloan: Which we abbreviate to CSUN to refer to the conference rather than the university. It's the digital accessibility and assistive technology field's largest annual gathering, and last week's conference was the 41st
David Sloan: CSUN, and it's still going strong after all these years. So, joining me this month to review the conference are my coworkers Jan Williams, Audit Practice Manager, and Megan Griffith, Accessibility Engineer, who are both also in attendance at CSUN last week. So, welcome, Jan and Megan.
Jan Williams: Thanks, Dave.
Meagan Griffith: No.
Jan Williams: Hi.
Jan Williams: Good to be here.
David Sloan: So, Jan, we'll start with you. You've been to CSUN before, so…
David Sloan: How would you summarize your experience this year, and how it contrasted with previous conferences you attended?
Jan Williams: Yeah, I've been twice before. The first time was…
Jan Williams: 10 or more years ago, back when it was in San Diego.
Jan Williams: And… and then the second time was 2 years ago.
Jan Williams: And… I guess the biggest difference for me was… my own personal experience of it was…
Jan Williams: This is my first time presenting. I had two presentations at this conference.
Jan Williams: And so, it does put you in a slightly different headspace than I was in the other two times, where I was just a sponge, taking in as much as I could from all the sessions, especially the first time around, you know, 10 or 11 years ago. I was…
Jan Williams: still newish to accessibility and trying to… trying to learn as much as I could from these sessions. Now I'm attending sessions, interested in what, you know, other accessibility consultancies are up to, and…
Jan Williams: And… and doing more work supporting our… our marketing efforts. So, that was the…
Jan Williams: the biggest difference for my personal experience, but also just, there's… there's a huge difference in the number of talks that are focused on AI these days, for good reason, and… and I certainly contributed to that with one of my talks, which was focused on… on machine learning, so…
Jan Williams: Yeah, those are the two big differences I noticed.
David Sloan: Yeah, and I always had that.
David Sloan: second conference… second talk that you gave, and it seemed like it got a lot of engagement from the audience that were… that were there, a lot of questions afterwards. So, do you want to give a quick highlight of what you covered on that talk?
Jan Williams: Yeah, the talk was called, I think, something like, enhancing…
Jan Williams: Rules-based testing with machine learning inference.
Jan Williams: And I was… I was… Trying to give kind of an inside-out look at
Jan Williams: how AI works, because it's… people talk about it in…
Jan Williams: abstract terms, it's like a black box for a lot of people, so I wanted to look at it, at what's actually going on under the hood, talk about how you can interrogate claims made about tools that integrate AI,
Jan Williams: And, you know, a good chunk of my presentation was talking… illustrating by example with a little prototype demo web browser extension that I made that
Jan Williams: Does visual analysis and structural analysis and integrates the predictions from
Jan Williams: from both those models to… to predict what's happening on the page, visually. Like, what the… basically, it's… I kind of broke down a part of the… the problem
Jan Williams: In automation, the big gap is… is a need for
Jan Williams: semantic classification of user interface elements, and if we can get pretty good performance there from AI models, then we can
Jan Williams: We can go a long way to bridging the gap.
Jan Williams: With… that we currently have with automation.
David Sloan: Yeah, I think that kind of…
David Sloan: There was a little bit of a sort of theoretical framework that you presented that would help people
David Sloan: Understand how others are talking about
David Sloan: AI-powered solutions, and especially for accessibility evaluation, that might give people a
David Sloan: You know, sort of stronger sense of how… how to… how to assess the promises or claims made by… by solutions.
Jan Williams: Yeah, I talked about precision and recall, which are concepts common in discussions around machine learning models, AI models, and…
Jan Williams: And what… what I have heard in claims made about
Jan Williams: certain tools that people are promoting is that, you know, this… this tool has very high precision, or zero false positives, and one of the… one of the points I tried to make is it's… you can't just use a single metric for the performance of these models. You have to look at precision and another concept called recall.
Jan Williams: Both are… you can look at in terms of a score.
Jan Williams: or a percentage. And, you know, lower precision tends to mean you have more false positives. Lower recall score tends to mean you have more false negatives, and you need to look at both. And you can look at a harmonized score called an F1 score, but if somebody just refers to precision, then you should ask them about recall, because it's very easy to have…
Jan Williams: really high precision and zero false positives if you never make… if you never detect anything, if you never detect any…
Jan Williams: Any, any errors or make any predictions.
David Sloan: Yeah, and that, you know, again, that's… that's helpful when Figuring out…
David Sloan: A trade-off, what makes most sense to you and your needs from a tool?
Jan Williams: Right.
David Sloan: Speaking of tools, you also talked about another tool.
David Sloan: In your other presentation.
Jan Williams: Yes, JALS Inspect. That is the… that presentation was called, Using JALS Inspect as a Screen Reader User Experience
Jan Williams: Tool.
Jan Williams: Roughly that.
Jan Williams: And…
Jan Williams: That one went well, too. I was pleased to see the level of engagement with the folks in the audience. I'm interested in applying JAWS Inspect
Jan Williams: to… Workflows that aren't just, You know, post-audit reviews,
Jan Williams: QA reviews. It's really looking at using JAWS Inspect from the very beginning, and…
Jan Williams: generating JAWS inspect reports for the purposes of, you know, refining your acceptance criteria, shifting left, obviously, and
Jan Williams: incorporating the screen reader output without… into your testing workflow, without necessarily needing to know how to operate… to operate a screen reader like JALS.
David Sloan: Yeah, I think that, sort of, helping people figure out how to make use of JAWS Inspect is always…
David Sloan: Yeah, and in the design development process, it's definitely something that
David Sloan: We've been trying to figure out
David Sloan: how… how to convey it effectively, so… so I definitely appreciated the… Cases disappeared there.
David Sloan: Yeah, there seemed to be a lot of interest.
Jan Williams: Okay.
David Sloan: Yeah, go ahead.
Jan Williams: No, that was it, yeah, there seemed to be a lot of interest from the folks in the audience, so I was really happy to see that.
David Sloan: Yeah.
David Sloan: So yeah, Megan, you were a first-timer at CSUN. How was your conference experience? And you're the…
David Sloan: Hawk as well. How did that go?
Meagan Griffith: Yeah, it was great. I knew it was one of the biggest conferences, but I was blown away by the scale of the whole event. It was so cool to just see so many fun things in the exhibit room, and I learned a lot from the talks.
Meagan Griffith: And my presentation went well. It was fun to talk about something a little less technical and more personal. So for context, the talk was about, accessibility and entertainment.
Meagan Griffith: Which is near and dear to my heart. My mom is hard of hearing and will lose all of her hearing, shortly in the coming years. So growing up, it was always a challenge to find things that the whole family could do that included my mom and were accessible beyond mandatory technology use. So seeing all these things come out with sporting events and museums and concerts has been really cool.
Meagan Griffith: And bringing that to the forefront in more of a lighthearted talk was very fun.
David Sloan: Yeah, and I guess that… that… co-location of
David Sloan: So CSUN takes place, what, 2 blocks from Disneyland?
David Sloan: One of the things that any
David Sloan: newcomer, or… whether you've been there once or five, or six times, the number of people in the environment walking around with Minnie Mouse ears on is always fun, so…
David Sloan: from an accessibility perspective, that kind of… near this huge amusement park, we're not that far from Hollywood.
David Sloan: Focus on entertainment is always there, and…
David Sloan: And people in entertainment are really…
David Sloan: Creative and thinking about enhancing the user experience and doing different…
David Sloan: sensory capabilities to enhance the user experience, so entertainment in the sort of physical world and using digital. There's a nice crossover with accessibility, so…
Meagan Griffith: Especially with just how common personal devices are now, and being able to create things to use personal devices, so then also there's no necessarily… there's not an obvious indicator, necessarily, that someone's using assistive technology, or it blends seamlessly with the environment, so it feels…
Meagan Griffith: similar experience-wise is really important as well, and that was reflected in a lot of the new popular accessibility features in entertainment. The personalization and use of personal devices is growing to be increasingly more popular.
David Sloan: Yeah, and you also touched on
David Sloan: Accessible entertainment in the sport.
David Sloan: area.
Meagan Griffith: Absolutely.
David Sloan: There's lots of stuff going on in sports, like… Baseball, basketball, whatever.
Meagan Griffith: Yeah, there's a new device, the one-quart device, that's a lap-sized, almost tablet.
Meagan Griffith: type of interface, and it has haptic feedback, so that in real time you can receive updates about the game in addition to commentary, so you're not necessarily having to take in both the audio description and hear real-time commentary. You can have the haptic feedback and hear the commentaries that's happening at the game, and then one of the attendees to the talk
Meagan Griffith: Actually, the answer that they are having an at-home version coming out soon, so you'll be able to follow along with the game streaming on your TV.
David Sloan: That… that sounds awesome, and…
David Sloan: you know, we talk a lot about the value of accessibility. There's often a secondary beneficiary.
David Sloan: As somebody who's…
David Sloan: recently moved to the US and is clueless about baseball, but is kind of interested in the game. I've been to a couple of games at Fenway Park in Boston.
David Sloan: I'm still… I still really have no idea what's going on, so anything that I can borrow to explain, you know, have people explaining to me what's going on and why it's going on, would help… would help me as a… as a… you know, as an additional audience of… of an assistive technology.
David Sloan: So… so did you get to other… talks, Megan's…
Meagan Griffith: Yeah, I went to quite a few. I went to… one that was really cool, I went to NASA, had a talk, and I didn't realize how much they've contributed to accessible technology.
Meagan Griffith: I learned quite a bit about their technology sharing program and how they influenced alt text and cochlear implants, so that was one of my favorite talks that I went to.
David Sloan: That sounds awesome, and it's often surprising where accessibility innovations come from.
David Sloan: I remember, you know, Like it or not, there's a lot of innovations come from
David Sloan: Defense research, military technology that is dealing with people operating in very high-stress environments with lots of
David Sloan: Sensory and cognitive limitations, physical limitations.
David Sloan: That translate into… Broader, human-computer interaction.
David Sloan: Challenges, or addressing human-computer interaction challenges, and… You know, that kind of… Feeding through of innovation to…
David Sloan: Broader consumer technologies.
David Sloan: You know, we do benefit in the end, even if
David Sloan: The original, goal was very different, so learning about some of the
David Sloan: sort of national agencies that innovate is really, really cool. Any other highlights that… Mother talks.
Meagan Griffith: a lot of… a lot of stuff having to do with, like, my little notepad next to me from the talks. Just a lot of talks about, AI and tau. Something that I thought was interesting, the way, I think it was audio I framed it, they framed it as the web has outpaced the model designed to fix it.
Meagan Griffith: So, how can we use AI strategies and things like that to help make our testing and our fixes keep up better with how quickly the web is developing, so that
Meagan Griffith: as we're spending this time trying to fix it, our solutions aren't outdated by the time the web's updated. So, I thought that was an interesting way to frame it. It made a lot of sense.
David Sloan: Yeah, and it kind of speaks to… The… you know, sometimes… AI…
David Sloan: Innovations are kind of posted as… Accessibility professionals are resistant to
David Sloan: Using automation and tools to do work.
David Sloan: And this is an alternative, when, actually, I feel like…
David Sloan: working in this field, people are really keen to jump onto using any tool that makes your work.
David Sloan: More efficient, cuts down on mistakes, allows you to do other things, so…
David Sloan: So that kind of speaks to that notion that
David Sloan: If we're all about advancing accessibility, then any tool that can speed up something or do it at scale is a good thing, as long as it does it well and doesn't create more work for us further down the line, or…
Meagan Griffith: And within an organization, too, I think as long as you're balancing it still with the human perspective, and including people with disabilities and testing and feedback, then there can be a balance there to help
Meagan Griffith: Accessibility professionals like ourselves keep up with the testing and solutions, so it's actually getting done, but we're not losing everything just to automated testing.
David Sloan: Yeah.
David Sloan: Jan, did you get to any other talks? I know you were buzzing about between our route, the Vespero Room and the exhibition hall a lot.
Jan Williams: Not as many as I would have liked. I did…
Jan Williams: really get a lot from your session on Title II, Dave and Megan, your session on accessible entertainment was great. Another one that I'd call out was eBay. Some folks from eBay did a session on how they're trying to integrate
Jan Williams: AI into their testing workflows. So they're… they're using… it's… it's either Claude or one of the GPT models to generate unit tests, and… and really all the way up, the testing chains, the testing workflow, integration testing.
Jan Williams: end-to-end testing. And it was just really cool to hear about… hear a big organization like, eBay, talk about…
Jan Williams: The, you know, the… talk candidly about the successes and challenges that they're dealing with.
Jan Williams: Working with emerging technologies and trying to automate testing, for their developers and their accessibility specialists.
David Sloan: Yeah, and I… that kind of… Here's what we're doing.
David Sloan: And talking candidly about achievements and challenges.
David Sloan: I feel like that's a…
David Sloan: that's always been something that CSUN's been able to offer as a space to share what you're doing, and compare it with others, and collaborate on making things better. So it's… it's not always you have to have an innovation, you have to show your way ahead of everyone else, it's more…
David Sloan: Here's how we're approaching a problem.
David Sloan: let's… let's share, solutions. There was a…
David Sloan: a Birds of a Feather session on AI and supporting accessibility efforts, which I really wanted to get to, and I didn't. Did either of you go to that?
Jan Williams: I don't think Megan did.
Meagan Griffith: I went to one of the Birds of a Feather, but that one was more just for first-time attendees. It wasn't specific to a topic.
David Sloan: Right. Yeah, I think, I think it was a Thursday lunchtime, so we'll need to do some…
David Sloan: Digging on, on… the output of that. I think it was organized by Ted Drake at Intuit, so…
David Sloan: I… I would imagine, knowing Ted, he's really good at…
David Sloan: Providing output of events like that.
David Sloan: Collaborating. Knowledge sharing. So, be worth… worth checking that out.
David Sloan: So we talked a bit about talks.
David Sloan: there was also… one of the things that I… it took me a long time as a… you know, I've been to CSUN a few times, and I always assumed it's a conference where there's lots of presentations, and you go and learn about things, not realizing just how significant the exhibition hall is, and the
David Sloan: So many vendors that go there and show
David Sloan: New tools, new assistive technologies, or there are large corporations talking about their accessibility efforts, or how they're
David Sloan: Integrating accessibility into their products.
David Sloan: Did you have time
David Sloan: To go around the exhibition hall and see anything interesting. Jan, I'll start with you, and then we'll go to you, Megan.
Jan Williams: Most of the time I spent in the exhibit hall was… was with the VSPERO booth, probably, trying to, you know, help… help out…
Jan Williams: you know, people interested in our products, mostly trying to stay out of the way of other people who actually know what they're talking about with the hardware that we… the really amazing hardware that we have there on display. But really, when I did get to walk around a little bit, I am amazed by
Jan Williams: the… the hardware innovation that is there on display, because we live in… we are… we are immersed in a digital accessibility world here, and it's just great to see what people are doing. I think there was a company, I think, called MIDI there,
Jan Williams: Showcasing some devices that they have that are designed to help
Jan Williams: people with disabilities make music, and I just love seeing the…
Jan Williams: The tactile, experience represented there in… in the exhibit halls.
David Sloan: That's cool. And, you know, I think that kind of helping people be creative
David Sloan: Beyond the, sort of, more… more, sort of, functional…
David Sloan: aspects of living, you know, navigating around and getting from A to B.
David Sloan: I love that there's… there's a… there's a focus in helping people sort of really…
David Sloan: Yeah, be creative and make music, make art, whatever, yeah. Megan, how about you?
Meagan Griffith: Yeah, I got to walk around a little bit, and I have to say my favorite was the Sony Ivo dog.
Meagan Griffith: just so cute, so cool. It's essentially like a robot companion dog, and it will develop its own little personality, and there's sensors on it, so if you rub along its back or stroke under its chin, it'll bark, and its tail will wag, and it had surprisingly expressive eyes.
Meagan Griffith: So I just thought that was very, very cute, but other than… a less light-hearted one, and one that was more genuinely really cool, I'm always, blown away by the adaptable clothing, and Nike had some really cool ones, and I think it can get lost that…
Meagan Griffith: assistive technology isn't just computers, it's other things like technology and clothing and things that just give folks with disabilities more agency and autonomy in their own lives, so I always really like seeing the adaptable fashion innovations in the field.
David Sloan: Right, and that is… that's especially valuable, and it looks cool as well. You know, you don't have this kind of medically designed assistive technology that really has paid no attention to aesthetics.
David Sloan: But instead, you've got a really, really cool-looking pair of Nike running shoes, and yeah, there's…
Meagan Griffith: Yeah.
David Sloan: Velcro, you know, on or off, or… or whatever, so…
Meagan Griffith: celebrated, so…
David Sloan: Yeah.
Meagan Griffith: It's really cool. I'm glad that they're involved, and I missed the keynote, but it looked like they had an interesting keynote as well about some of the new releases they have this year.
David Sloan: Yeah, and that's another thing about…
David Sloan: CSUN is like… I know there's, you know, we're not the only podcast reflecting on the conference, and it's almost like a jigsaw puzzle. Listen to all the podcasts, and people will talk about different sessions, because there are so many sessions, it's just impossible.
David Sloan: to go to the mall. I feel like there's probably about 7 or 8 parallel…
David Sloan: things going on at the same time. You know, there are so many different conference rooms, there's the exhibition hall, that at any given
David Sloan: point in the day, have a huge choice, and sometimes you don't, because there's a really popular session, maybe it's Feingold's legal update, or… or it's the keynote, or whatever, where that's the only thing going on. Sometimes there's popular sessions that
David Sloan: We are the…
David Sloan: They build up really quickly, and then you end up going somewhere else. But just kind of figuring out
David Sloan: where do I go? Where do I focus my attention, and then how do I find out what I missed?
David Sloan: That's… that's always the… the challenge in… in attending.
David Sloan: I'd also have to give a hat to Megan to point out the raising the Floor booth.
David Sloan: So that people…
Meagan Griffith: people.
David Sloan: But, you know, I ended up going in and had a chat with them, and Raising the Floor is this great, non-profit kind of coalition of accessibility researchers and designers.
David Sloan: And they showed off a couple of interesting tools. There's, Morphic as a…
David Sloan: a tool that sits on your desktop, you know, whether it's the Windows or OS X, or whatever, macOS,
David Sloan: And it kind of exposes all of the accessibility features of that platform, and puts them in this single…
David Sloan: their interface, so it… Basically, it tries to solve the problem of
David Sloan: platforms have all sorts of accessibility features, but you've got to know where they are to go find them. And having this thing sitting right at the front,
David Sloan: Just makes… makes them easier to find, and that can help solve a problem, especially
David Sloan: For people who are maybe… Their accessibility needs are changing over time with age, whatever.
David Sloan: just making it easier. And I'd heard about it, but I'd never seen it in practice, and I was really impressed with that.
Meagan Griffith: Yeah, and that's so… I am biased, because I did help with the research and development of that one. Back in college, I worked really closely with, Greg and Baron, who were at the table when I was at the Trace Center. But the other feature of that that's just exceptional is that
Meagan Griffith: If you have a profile with it and you log onto it on another device, it will sync all of your settings.
Meagan Griffith: Which was especially important so that, for example, if you're in a rural area and you don't have access to internet and you use public libraries, it can be really difficult to
Meagan Griffith: just get the access to the settings to make the computer accessible, so if they have Morphic on the computers and you log in, it syncs to your profile since it's using the system settings and changes all of them so that you can virtually access any computer.
David Sloan: That… that's very cool, because that's… that's thinking about…
David Sloan: the problem in its broadest sense, rather than just a sort of one person, one device. It's thinking about how people… where people use devices and when, so…
Meagan Griffith: Or even on a home computer with multiple family members.
David Sloan: Right.
Meagan Griffith: And you're not constantly having to go back in and change your settings if someone else has changed your accessibility settings off.
Meagan Griffith: So that is a… it's a really… it's a really cool product, and I was really glad to see it there, and still getting presented.
David Sloan: Yeah, no, I… I… that… raising the floor has been…
David Sloan: In… you know, they've been doing work for a long time, and it's… it's nice to see
David Sloan: You know, just how useful and usable
David Sloan: The output of that project has.
David Sloan: The other thing, I don't know how you feel about this, is just how seeing people
David Sloan: Using some of the technologies at the conference.
David Sloan: you know, just sort of trying things out, so that the Glide… Mark came… did either of you…
David Sloan: people using that I… That's…
Meagan Griffith: think I saw that.
David Sloan: This is a… it's a cane with… it's a cane with wheels, and it's… I think it may have cameras, sensors.
David Sloan: And I… I asked around a bit more about this smart cane that's in development and was being presented, and…
David Sloan: Seems like a couple of our co-workers are…
David Sloan: you know, on the waiting list for when it comes out, it's still in development, but they have prototypes there, and it's kind of
David Sloan: You know, using a load of different technologies to make To help make navigation Sure.
David Sloan: but it made me realize that one of the great things about CSUN is that in people.
David Sloan: assistive technology, and particularly innovations in this technology, and it's a way for Gold, or… non-disabled.
David Sloan: in use.
David Sloan: And maybe challenge some assumptions that they might have had. You know, at the conference, there is a…
David Sloan: A very visible presence of people with disabilities, which you would…
David Sloan: expect and hope for a conference like that. And…
David Sloan: For a lot of people who maybe are new to accessibility.
David Sloan: It's… it's a great place to go and talk to people.
David Sloan: See, daily, who experience accessibility issues daily, and…
David Sloan: And, and, and, and just…
David Sloan: Clarify some assumptions, maybe correct some…
David Sloan: some assumptions as well, so I feel like that's always… It's always something that's… positive.
David Sloan: I think for me, even if I think I know it.
David Sloan: It's always something I don't know, that I learn, every year I attend.
Meagan Griffith: That was something that I thought was interesting with CSUN, and I didn't expect any less, but that I was never the smartest person in the room. Not that I am otherwise, but even presenting on a topic that I had prepared for.
Meagan Griffith: I knew that there was going to be someone there who knew more than I did, or had a lived experience to contribute to it, and I think that's one of the really cool things about CSUN, is that it's just a bunch of people
Meagan Griffith: really passionate about accessibility and the advancements of it, and I think it's a really good learning opportunity, especially if you're diving into perhaps a technical role and you're new to the field, and you are just…
Meagan Griffith: buried in WCAG, and learning all of the rules to go and see some things, and get involved in the community and actually talk to some people.
David Sloan: Yeah, so as we, kind of, come to the end of this conversation, that's probably a… a good, kind of.
David Sloan: segue into thinking about takeaways. You know, what… what would you say was a sort of
David Sloan: main, you know, key piece of knowledge that you took away, or a memory that you took away that would influence your work? I'll ask you that, Megan, and then we'll go to Dan.
Meagan Griffith: Huh.
Meagan Griffith: Well, I think I probably said the biggest one that I would have answered with. It was honestly just really nice to be back in an environment that was…
Meagan Griffith: I guess I've been remote for the longest time in this field, since I moved from academia to industry, so being back in an environment where you can just talk to people and observe new things and have more organically flowing conversations outside of the typical workday schedule, in more of an academic-type sense, it was really refreshing and nice to just see all of the fun new things, and
Meagan Griffith: Being around other people who genuinely care about it as well.
David Sloan: Yeah, yeah, well said.
David Sloan: How about you, John?
Jan Williams: There… I think there's still, despite the…
Jan Williams: focus on automation with so many sessions. There still is something for everybody there, no matter where you are in your career. If you're new, there are some good, really good beginner sessions. There are at least… I saw at least two, one on a beginner's take on WCAG and a beginner's session on accessibility testing.
Jan Williams: there are sessions for people who are the only accessibility representative or specialist at their organization, and there are many of those people like that out there, and I was at one session
Jan Williams: That focused on building an accessibility program, getting buy-in, and setting, you know, long-term milestone goals for your organization.
Jan Williams: And, you know, topics for developers.
Jan Williams: it's… there's just… there still is something for everybody there. It was… it was…
Jan Williams: true for me when I… when I was starting 10 plus years ago, and looking for those types of sessions that are, you know, about techniques, and… and true for me today, where I'm more curious about
Jan Williams: Program building, automation techniques, emerging technologies. So,
Jan Williams: Still, I think, great for anybody who's working in accessibility.
David Sloan: Yeah, I think what you…
David Sloan: sort of really highlighted there is just the way even one session, regardless of where you are in your accessibility journey, or the level of experience you have.
David Sloan: you're probably going to get something valuable out of it. You know, either it's an introduction to a topic you don't know a lot about, or it's…
David Sloan: somebody presenting it in a way that helps you clarify your own understanding, or compare how you've approached something with them, so…
David Sloan: get this… As a speaker, you get to serve multiple audiences with the same talk.
David Sloan: And I really like that. And then when you add in the questions, you know, it might be somebody asking for a clarification, or it might be someone giving an answer to another person's question. So in the talk, I gave a talk on
David Sloan: documentation, and somebody asked a question about the Accessibility Act, and whether VPAT ACR would be appropriate evidence to show conformance, and then that led to someone else in the audience who worked for ITI, who produced the VPAT
David Sloan: template, you know, sharing some updates on how they're going to be responding to the new version of EN301549 when it's published. So, you get conversations in the audience.
David Sloan: And others look and learn, so, I always think that's… that's… those little serendipitous moments are great.
Jan Williams: Yeah, and then they… if you have the opportunity to go there, the conversations that continue in the lobby, in the hotel bar, I mean, if you have the energy to stay up, that's where some of the best conversations happen.
David Sloan: So, I was going to ask you both about a sort of final call and, you know, encouraging others to attend, and Jan, it sounds like, bring plenty of energy with you.
Jan Williams: Yes.
David Sloan: You can.
Jan Williams: Especially if you're coming from the East Coast, you'll feel it around 7pm, probably, like I did, but… yeah, those… I…
Jan Williams: I, I think… Being able to, be in…
Jan Williams: in the same physical space as people in this community, and that's really what it is. It's not just people who work in the same field. They're all… they all have similar interests and are similarly invested in the same goal, and it's just great to hear different perspectives from people who are working, you know, from different angles at this same problem.
David Sloan: Yeah, here, here.
David Sloan: Megan, any final sort of encouragement that you would give to people thinking about attending who haven't been before?
Meagan Griffith: I think definitely if you're… if you're able to attend, you should go. I think it's really cool for maybe people just starting their accessibility career, especially, you know, I started in academia, and I…
Meagan Griffith: I didn't go to CSUN, and I was fortunate enough to find my way into industry and with a company like The Sparrow that genuinely cares about this stuff, but I think it's a really good spot to just find how people in the industry are contributing to this outside of academia, if you're not sure which way you want to go.
Meagan Griffith: And something, too, like Jan was saying, you need…
Meagan Griffith: bring plenty of energy to keep up after. It's not like, you know, work and afterwards, you go out for dinner or something. It's like, oh, let's not talk about work. If you like talking about this, it's the place to go, and where you find people where
Meagan Griffith: sunup to sundown, you're just talking about this, real things, hypotheticals, so I think it's a great time.
David Sloan: Yeah, no, that's… that's really well put.
David Sloan: Well, thank you both for joining me and sharing your C's done experiences. You know, I'll just mention, we know that attending a conference in person isn't an option for many people for a range of reasons, so…
David Sloan: A mix of in-person and online events is always going to be the best way forward for a community to share accessibility knowledge and experiences in an accessible way.
David Sloan: But that all said, when we can get together, it really generates an energy that we take back and can use in our work going forward. So, thanks to everyone who attended CSUN as a speaker, as a person who attended, or asked questions, whatever.
David Sloan: Thank you for making it such a great experience.
David Sloan: Well, now you know the state of accessibility. I'm David Sloan, thanking Jan Williams and Megan Griffith, and reminding you all that the state of accessibility is always changing.
David Sloan: Help us affect change.