User Experience & Accessibility

This session will cover the basics of getting started with Layout Builder for Drupal 8 and 9. We will cover how it can be used to supercharge your site building tasks so that content editors can utilize the awesome power of Layout Builder for a unique front-end presentation. 

In this talk, we will go over:

Every day we have a series of choices to make. Get up early to work-out or hit snooze and sleep a bit longer? Make a nutritious meal at home or order something maybe just a bit less healthy to go? Finally, stop rocking sweatpants at work or switch to wearing PJs instead? All the choices we make - even the little ones - shape our identities and empower us in our own lives.

A look at my 2020 year-long project of migrating the website for the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts at Georgia Tech from a completely proprietary content system to Drupal 9, all while dealing with the uncertainties and headaches of a pandemic.  We'll explore how I dealt with finding and getting content out of a one-of-a-kind CMS with zero documentation and managed the project with virtually

“Go Away and Come Back Tomorrow” - that’s what the man at the gate to the Emerald City said to Dorthy and her companions in the Wizard of Oz. Every inaccessible site is essentially putting a face at the door that yells “Go Away” to nearly 20% of the US and Canadian populations. 

...but clients and budgets and deadlines, Oh My!

Many Drupal projects spend a lot of time and energy on architecture, integrations, deployment pipelines, user experience and more. Very few spend time tuning the editor experience, often resulting in obtuse and intimidating content editing interfaces. The result? Stale content, unhappy clients who dread editing the site.

Words Matter and awareness of how powerful even the most subtle language distinctions can be is an important factor in understanding human experience.  In this presentation we will discuss the language used in daily life and examine how and why certain words and phrases can be hurtful to members of the disabled community -- even if no harm is intended.  Covered topics will include:

With an increased awareness of DEI and accessibility in the world, are you keeping up online? From Zoom to Twitter to websites, this talk will highlight the importance of creating accessible, diverse, equitable and inclusive digital spaces.

Getting it Done with Strategy

Accessibility is more than code, it’s more than UX, it’s also a vital part of your marketing strategy. In this session, we’ll talk about ways to talk about accessibility that showcase it’s value to your stakeholders. 

We’ll touch on:

Many Drupal developers consider site builders to be one of the most important types of users they are building for. Dries regularly talks about how to “Improve the site builder experience” in his state-of-Drupal keynotes. But how well do you understand site builders and what they do? Who is this mythical site builder that is using the software you create?