Selected Session

Unlock the potential of accessibility

Speaker(s)
Miro Dietiker
Proposed Track(s)
Business, Community
Level of expertise
Beginner
Session Type
Regular (45 min)
Day
Saturday
Time Slot
-
Room
Parsenn

Miro will introduce accessibility which is often misunderstood as a complex and expensive additional requirement of government projects to allow participation of (the few) disabled people.

Fact is though, it creates additional values for all of us, because we all experience situations that limit our abilities - at least to a certain extent. We will look at many examples that will allow us to define accessibility as an objective key criteria to achieve proper user centricity with convenient usability.

Businesses simply can’t afford to release inaccessible solutions beyond early prototypes. Start-ups especially know that a frustrated user hardly cannot be recovered.

Miro will identify reasons why so many Swiss projects still are not accessible - despite the ratification of the UN disability convention - and how to change that in the future.

We will showcase a few impressive projects that show us ways to do accessibility right. There’s a lot to steal - err learn from.

Finally we will discuss our challenge:
Would you commit to always guarantee the accessibility of your projects delivered?
We do and we think it’s time to release a manifesto with a supporter directory.
Let’s talk about how we can bring Accessibility to the mainstream.
 

Portraits

Miro Dietiker - Founder & strategy at MD Systems GmbH

Miro is convinced that open technologies are the only way to overcome the great challenges of our time. He founded MD Systems GmbH (https://www.md-systems.ch/) as a leader in Open Source and is committed to universally accessible technology so that disadvantaged people can also participate in society. His interest in accessibility was sparked in 2009 when he participated in the EU research program AAL (Active Assisted Living) in the project TAO (Third Age Online).

Slides