3rd edition of Inclusive India: Digital First has made it to books! About 6 months ago, Shilpi Kapoor, Founder of BarrierBreak hasasked if I would want to be the Program Chair for this conference and I have accepted without any second thought; why did I do? I knew that it is the only conference of its kind in India and Shilpi is the only person who could do it.
While we celebrate it’s success, I must admit that industry has not changed much since we had Techshare India from 2008 – 2016. It hasn’t been an easy thing to get sponsors, speakers and participants. It was easy for us to get partners for perhaps the reason that our partners share our vision and yes, there is no money involved.
While curating program, we not only wanted organizations that has been doing accessibility for years but also wanted companies who have just started their accessibility journey or even yet not started but who we wanted to start their accessibility journey; speakers don’t have to pay for the conference and an opportunity for them to network with accessibility and inclusion industry. Guess what, even this wasn’t an easy task for us. There are many organizations who have like minded people but shockingly told us they are not authorized by their employers to speak. There are also a few companies who happily accepted and in fact, started their accessibility process through this journey. My request to all those companies who have fear about speaking in public is that please bear in mind that accessibility community is a good one and our first interest is to empower the organizations and not to blame them. and yes, Accessibility is not a rocket science!
Well, thanks to Amazon and the Law Office of Lainey Feingold who are platinum and supported sponsors respectively, got good partners like IAAP, NCPEDP, APD, DEOC and Mitra Jyothi and were able to find speakers for all panels and learning hub, wasn’t it easy to have people registered? Unfortunately, no. why? was the cost of registration is too high? It is just INR 3000. For a conference with qualitative set up and speakers at a 5 Star hotel, INR 3000 is a bare minimum. The conference has amazing food and ensures accessibility. But we had to offer discounted price to many people and several free coupans too. Sad part is there are some organizations who claim to be competitors of organizers have opted to avail free coupan. I have seen organizations spend about INR 10,000 for a few conferences and was under the impression that with INR 3000 as a ticket, we would get an amazing response but industry has proved us wrong. If it wasn’t Shilpi Kapoor, I am not sure the conference would take off. Well, we all knew this and all that we can do is that we can hope for a transformation. That said, there are also some amazing organizations who proactively invested and travelled all the way; there are individuals too who have travelled from different parts of the country. I extend my appreciation and gratitude to all of them.
With all of this, it gave me utmost satisfaction to see smile on all participants throught he event. It was great to see 370+ attendees and 45 incredible speakers. Let’s do a recap.
We did a pre-conference event on 21st November, 2024 hosted by Amazon, Mitra Jyothi and BarrierBreak. It was an invite only event and there was about 50+ attendees from cross disability. We did a round of introductions. Then Peter Korn, Director of Accessibility, Amazon Devices, introduced the entire team of Amazon Accessibility. It’s great to hear about the wonderful work each of them does. They also empower people with disabilities internally using employee resource groups. It has been lovely meeting some of the old friends who now work at Amazon. I met Shadi Abou-Zahra, Kiran Kaja, and Madhu Bala Sharma. I also made a few more new friends. Of course, all of us had yummy snacks too!
Finally 22nd November, 2024 has come – the big day! It was fantastic to see about 340+ people turned up right on time. We started off with meet and greet. I had a privilege to hos this. We got together all participants in a room and made them introduce to each other.
Inclusive India: Digital start has started with opening note by Shilpi Kapoor, CEO of BarrierBreak, followed by launch of BB100 Digital Landscape of Financial Sector in India – a report put together by BarrierBreak and NCPEDP. It’s shocking to see home page of each company has about 120 accessibility errors. This is not even a thorough eveluation of both automated and manual accessibility testing; these issues are triggered by an automated accessibility testing tool by BarrierBreak. 100 home pages of financial institutions were testede for accessibility and not even one of them met compliance. Call for action for all of us is to download this report and follow-up with financial institutions. As a starting point, download the report and share with bankers where you have accounts and follow-up.
Then keynote was delivered by Peter Korn and team of Amazon who have addressed audience about accessibility features of several amazon devices and how they build accessibility as a culture. Wow, such an amazing work is happening at Amazon and it’s great to see that some of that happens from their India centres.
Post the keynote, lighting of the lamp took place by Shri. Das Suryavamshi, State Commissioner, People with Disabilities in Karnataka; he was urged by Shri. Arman Ali and Shilpi Kapoor that his office should take measures to ensure accessibility in the state of Karnataka and would be great to see that Accessibility gets a stage at Bengaluru Tech Summit next year.
That calls for a coffee / tea break. Post that, stage got split into 3 rooms Inclusion, Accessibility and Learning Hub. There were fantastic panels ranging from work places solutions to discussion about smart home technologies to standards like IS17802 to building inclusion policies in organizations in the inclusion track. In the Accessibility track, there were discussions like starting accessibility journey, advancing accessibility with automated and manual testing and then user testing and much more. In learning hub, participants have learnt top 5 things about ARIA, building accessible forms and Designing Inclusive User experiences.
Conference came to an end with a powerful closing remarks by Shilpi Kapoor where she expressed how important it’s to see accessibility and inclusion leaders in India and why we all should be torch bearers to promote accessibility in bigger way. Next Inclusive India: Digital First will take place in Mumbai; which also marks 20 years of BarrierBreak. Oh yes, 2025 also my 20th year working in the space of Accessibility. We look forward to make it even better and bigger.
My heartfelt thanks all those who have made this event a grand success specially my colleagues, Ram,ya, Raghavendra, Moiz and all others.
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