Amazingly, we were able to cover all of this in just under an hour!
Thanks to the co-founders of An Event Apart, Jeffrey Zeldman + Eric Meyer for letting me share a stage I’ve revered for over a decade now, thanks to Toby, Marci, Mike & company for the amazing work behind the scenes at every AEA event. Also, very special thanks to Todd Libby for capturing this amazing 4K video on his new iPhone he got just to do this for me. 🤗
Jeffrey Zeldman answers the provocative question, “Is Web Design Dead?”. He enlightens us to what the Web was, where it’s at now, and where it could go in the future. He touches on the many short-sighted predictions that tend to prod our delicate psyches such as automation and new technologies poised to replace Web Designers. He encourages us to ignore the rhetoric and continue to learn as tools change how Web Design is done. He also emphasizes that the Web was built on sharing, and that we must continue to share if we want to not only protect its spirit, but keep it alive and thriving.
Jeffrey Zeldman is the Godfather of Web Design, and unquestionably the greatest friend of the Web. He’s a guy behind highly esteemed Web Design content initiatives such as A List Apart, An Event Apart and A Book Apart. He’s a prolific speaker and heavily influential blogger. He’s the Author of the our industry’s staple: Designing with Web Standards. He’s the host of The Big Web Show. He’s also the founder of renown Web Design studio Happy Cog. Back in the day, he played synth and Casiotone with The Insect Surfers, a DC post-punk techno-surf band.
Derek Featherstone teaches us how designing for people with disabilities is really just better design for everybody. He shows us how people with disabilities aren’t different from us, they just use different tools to accomplish the same things. He encourages us to apply empathy to grow our skills in learning how to design for accessibility. He also reveals how taking small steps to incorporate something new into our design process could change everything.
Derek Featherstone is an internationally known speaker and authority on accessibility and inclusive design. He has been working on the web since 1999, starting as a web developer. He migrated to the field of accessibility and quickly discovered the need to move thinking about accessibility and inclusion into the design process. He founded and led an international team of accessibility and usability experts at Simply Accessible, which was recently acquired by Level Access, where Derek is now the Chief Experience Officer – focused on ensuring that accessibility and inclusion are seen as an integral part of user experience and service design, rather than as a simple checklist afterthought. Derek lives in Ottawa, Canada with his wife and their 4 children. He’s also a fitness instructor and 3 time Iron Man triathlon finisher.
Origin Story (5:53)
What Were Your “Aha” Moments? (12:02)
Why Do We Tend to Forget About Disabled Users? (17:15)
Tools Disabled Folks Use to Navigate (20:47)
Accessibility, Greater Than Aesthetics (31:37)
Has Designing for Accessibility Ever Made Things Worse for Majority of “Able” Users? (36:14)
Story of Biggest Triumph in Designing for Inclusivity + Accessibility (42:36)
Jason Ogle shows us how we can all be design superheroes with the right mindset. He reveals how grit trumps talent, every day. He reminds us of the peril that bad leadership and ego can have on a team and organization. He challenges us to never stop fighting for our users. He also inspires us to be a catalyst for our community.
Jason Ogle is human, not dancer. He fails early, and learns often. He’s a growth-minded, avid reader and listener whose vehicle is a rolling university, and a biz-minded, strategic designer who loves to make life better for his users. He’s a passionate user defender who fights for the users who are victims of bad design decisions. He’s an influential podcaster who uses the enchanting magic of audio to inspire and equip an audience of hungry and ambitious designers. He’s an evocative (often contrarian) writer who believeth in the power of the written word. He’s a self-aware and highly empathic servant-leader who believes that humans are so much more than resources. He’s also a loving husband, father of seven (one’s in heaven), and thankful believer who has a personal relationship with the Creator of the Universe. Fun fact: He once had to get a manicure to be a hand-model for a tech ad, and he has a rare essay titled “Altars of Satan” given to him and signed by Eldridge Cleaver.
Jeremy Keith reveals how the web is neither good or bad, nor neutral, but an amplifier. He inspires us to not let the future be just something that happens to us, but rather something we make with the small things we do today. He encourages us to build software ethically with our users’ psychological vulnerabilities in mind. He motivates us to not build on rented land, but to publish using the superpower of our own URLs. He also shows us how looking to the past is just as important as looking to the future.
Jeremy Keith lives in Brighton, England where he makes websites with the splendid design agency Clearleft. You may know him from such books as DOM Scripting, Bulletproof Ajax, HTML5 For Web Designers, and most recently Resilient Web Design. He curated the dConstruct conference for a number of years as well as Brighton SF, and he organised the world’s first Science Hack Day. He also made the website Huffduffer to allow people to make podcasts of found sounds—it’s like Instapaper for audio files. Hailing from Erin’s green shores, Jeremy maintains his link to Irish traditional music running the community site The Session. He also indulges a darker side of his bouzouki-playing in the band Salter Cane. Jeremy spends most of his time goofing off on the internet, documenting his time-wasting on adactio.com, where he has been writing for over fifteen years. A photograph he took appears in the film Iron Man.
