Accessibility communities and conferences

Most of what’s genuinely hard about accessibility work - edge cases, screen reader quirks, how to argue for it internally - gets solved faster in conversation with someone who’s already hit the same problem. These are the places that conversation happens.

CSUN Assistive Technology Conference #

The CSUN Assistive Technology Conference, run by California State University Northridge’s Center on Disabilities, has been going for more than 40 years and is the largest conference of its kind. It leans broader than just web development - assistive technology, policy, research - but the web accessibility track is substantial.

axe-con #

axe-con is Deque’s free, two-day virtual conference, with every session recorded and available on demand afterward. It’s web-development-focused in a way CSUN isn’t, and free is a real advantage if budget is the thing stopping you from attending a conference at all.

AccessU #

AccessU, run by the nonprofit Knowbility, is a hands-on training-focused event rather than a talks-and-slides conference - four days of workshops across development, design, policy, and testing tracks, with both in-person (Austin, Texas) and virtual attendance.

IAAP - International Association of Accessibility Professionals #

The IAAP is the professional body for the field, offering the CPACC and WAS certifications along with membership, training, and networking. Worth knowing about even if certification isn’t the goal - it’s one of the more structured ways to find accessibility professionals in a given region or industry.

The web-a11y Slack community #

The web-a11y Slack is an active, long-running Slack workspace for asking accessibility questions and getting real answers from people who work in the field daily. Open signup was shut down to cut spam, so joining now means DMing an admin for an invite - the welcome page linked above has the current process and code of conduct.