The theme of this year’s ‘DEG Day’ was accessibility and adaptability. We are sincerely grateful to the Royal Society for Blind Children and in particular Shalni Sood (Director of Philanthropy) and Callum Russell (Trustee) for their insightful presentation into the reality of living and working with vision impairments and for providing much food for thought which some members have already taken back to their own organisations to lobby for a review to identify where improvements can be made. For anyone wishing to do the same, please note that Callum is also the founder of Crystal Eyes which offers training, guidance and advice in this respect.
We also heard from Accessibility Made Easy. Katie Humphries (Founder) provided these valuable top 10 accessibility tips for making documents easier to navigate for the visually impaired.
You may notice a slight change in the DEG brand colours which has been made following the help and advice of the various expert presenters and which we hope makes our own communications more accessible in future.
Our Platinum Sponsors, Omnidocs explained how accessibility translates to the document arena, provided by Frederik Dessau (Chief Experience Officer) and Morten Hald Mortensen (CTO, Partner).
Finally, our panel of innovators shared their experiences of introducing and implementing an accessibility framework within their organisations. Thank you to Rachel Baiden (Global Technology Training Manager and LTC4 Contributing and Board Member), Gill Garrod (Technology Trainer) – Squire Patton Boggs, and Chloe Parfitt (Digital Learning Manager) and Sally Short (Digital Learning Specialist) – Burges Salmon for such an inspiring view of what those organisations have achieved and the approaches adopted, challenges overcome and plans for the future. We are pleased to be able to provide access to these panel-suggested resources for those eager to know more.
A huge thank you to all who attended the event, whether in person or virtually; and particularly to our presenters, and our sponsors:
Terry Ponsford, one of our regular contributors, provided us with an excellent write up of the event; we really appreciate her taking the time to share her thoughts on the proceedings.
