The web should be accessible to everyone, including people with disabilities thanks to assistive technologies. Once you have claimed that, you should be on the right side of the good-thinking people, but it may happen that this would not change anything to your life. Not being neither deaf, sighted person or blind, I am part of the people who accepted this notion of accessibility as a must have, but kept it purely theoretical … until ParisWeb 2012. This was my first time I actually realized that accessibility was needed and possible. Let me share with you few concrete actions that Paris Web deployed to make everyone on the same page during the event.

Sign language all day long. The conference was held in different rooms and each of it has a team of 2 or 3 people providing all day long live translation with sign language.This support was completed by velotypie (meaning, a screen displayed on stage, where each and any words pronounced by the speaker, including jokes, was typed) and french live translation via headsets when speakers where expressing themselves in English. As you can guess, this is simple to organize : what you need is people with appropriate skills such as sign language, english translation (@porteneuve made the job), good typers… The best challenge here was to make the choice (and associated investment) to make the event accessible. (more…)