The digital accessibility conference, DigAcc25, that took place in June 2025 continues to resonate with me. This blog post is a delayed reflection on the event; by writing about it, it’s also an opportunity to review what I learned and how I intend to take any ideas forward in the year ahead.
Organised by the University of Nottingham, it’s a hybrid event allowing people to join online or in person. Various universities set up in-person events for staff to attend and once again, we were able to host a ‘goggle box’ encounter at the University of York. Many of us found coming together in person to attend an online conference to be an enjoyable and sociable event last year, and it continued to be a successful format this year. It also gives me a reason to do some baking and to share some swag from Gavin Henrick (Brickfield Education) and from Everway (formerly Texthelp). With 15 attendees, it wasn’t the most busy event, by any means, but it was still a great opportunity for CPD for those who attended. We were blessed to have several students (and a past student!) join us for a rich lunch time discussion.
Running this for the second time meant it was easier to organise as we could simply duplicate local sign up forms, promotion campaigns, room and AV organisation etc. However, the event happens at a busy time for academics who are marking to deadlines. This does limit engagement somewhat on the day. I’d be interested in finding out how other universities managed to get more academics involved in their event. One idea I have is to ask colleagues to submit papers for the event which may encourage others to sign up and attend at least one or two sessions.
I was personally more drawn to any sessions that were being presented by academics as their accessible practice was something I wanted to share with colleagues. Cerian Brewer (Uni of Nottingham) did a great job explaining why she decided to adopt more accessible and digital practices to help all students in her Maths module. Likewise Robert Barham (Uni of Leeds) shared a specific workflow to output accessible formats from LaTeX using BookML. Many of us found it a pity that the Maths and STEM sessions weren’t all grouped together so those who were interested in the topic were able to sit in one room together for a whole session. Perhaps it’s something Nottingham will consider next year in the organising of the event?
Another topic that drew my interest was Isabella Henman (The Open University) talking about Co-designing workshops with neurodiverse students. With my Distractibles hat on, I found myself drawn to the keyword ‘neurodiverse’. It made me realise how important it was to have the right keywords in the title of someone’s session, making it easier to find the topics you wanted to see. Again, if sessions were grouped together by theme, it would take the pain out of figuring out which room to go to for the specific session you wanted to view. Colleagues found having to sit through ‘strategy’ sessions less meaningful if they weren’t involved in this work. I know I can sell a 1.5 hour session to academic colleagues more easily if they know they were going to get insights from multiple speakers on a topic of interest!
I found my own presentation with colleague, Chris Brunt from EDI went really fast! We presented on the progress we’d made at York on embedding accessible procurement into our infrastructure, a topic that was nicely presented last year by UCL (Session 1: Shifting everything left. Getting digital accessibility right in procurement via the Accessibility Passport) and Viki Galt (Session 3: University of Edinburgh: Efforts to Implement Institutional-Wide Accessibility Testing). You can catch up with mine and Chris’ recording in Session 3, Invisible Infrastructure, Visible Impact: Embedding Accessibility Where It Matters Most).
My colleague, Alice Bennett, presented on a timely topic, Al and Accessibility: assistance, responsibilities and risks. You can catch up with her recording on Al and Accessibility in session 2, DigAcc25 website. Alice wrote a great blog post on this topic too (AI and Accessibility: feature, the future or fad?).
Our lunchtime discussion was the highlight of the day as it allowed us to regroup and consider how digital accessibility was progressing at the University. We acknowledged that there was signficant progress in some departments while others were lagging behind. A programme leader commented on how we needed to provide more support for the managers having difficult conversations with academics on the standard of their resources. We felt the European Accessibility Act provided another opportunity to raise the profile of digital accessibility at the Uni. In terms of feedback for the conference format, everyone enjoyed spending the time together but wanted sessions to be based on topics and have more student representation. We also wanted more realistic representations on challenges and issues rather than just hearing about successes.
When I reflect on what I wrote about last year’s DigAcc24 conference and what actions we hoped to take forward, we’ve made great progress on creating the infrastructure for procuring accessible systems, including the development of personas to bring to life the issues disabled staff and students can face. We’ve also made progress on supporting staff to create accessible documents. However, the current climate does make it difficult to engage academics in discussions to change their practice when they have been faced with redundancies and other cut backs. We are lucky to have some very dedicated staff we can work with to encourage greater adoption of accessible practices. We just have to keep on amplifying their good work and continuing to use student voice as much as possible.
So optimistically, here are some actions for me to consider, following this year’s DigAcc25:
- Catch up with more of the recordings and share with colleagues who I believe will benefit, especially the Accessible Maths sessions. Organise an internal meeting of the accessible maths working group to consider further actions.
- Follow up with colleagues who are in the procurement process to see how the audit training has helped them. Collate stories to share.
- At our e-accessibility working group, discuss how we provide more support for managers trying to raise the standard of their team’s resources.
- Encourage colleagues and students to deliver sessions at DigAcc26.
A big thank you to the staff and students who volunteered to help with the day. It was much appreciated and made the day flow very smoothly. See you next year!
Catch up with recordings at DigAcc25 website.