Accessibility

Hackers & Designers aims to do the best we can with the tools and resources available to us to create more access in the spaces we convene, the information we provide, the digital tools and platforms we contribute to, the activities we facilitate, the publications we make and all projects we embark on. Creating access is an ongoing process and there is always room for more access. Therefore, in the case that you encounter a space, page or moment where you believe your or someone else's needs could have been better accommodated, we'd like invite you to inform us through this form. We wish to do our best to reduce barriers.

[something about the awkwardness of making a "statement" and the complexity of living up to what we say?]

Approach

We believe that a process of making access starts with posing the question "What do you need to access this space, page or moment?", while acknowledging the inherent power imbalances on the sending and receiving ends of this question. Here, a guest and host are implicated in a negotiation, each with their own needs, limitations and preconditions. Thus, a follow up question should be posed: "Who is inviting who into who's world?", allowing us to reflect on the violent history of access-making and look towards crip and disability justice as a point of departure.

Processes and conversations around making access have to center crip and disabled voices and reject assimilationist and solutionist approaches. These approaches, with their roots in modernism and techno-solutionism, have historically systemically designed, built and replicated a world by and for able bodies. In this world, disabled bodies are excluded guests who are given additional tools, aids and access points in order to "assimilate" into it, i.e. to navigate, operate and inhabit it as an able body would. An anti-assimilationist approach thus departs from the perspective that it is not the bodies that are disabled, but the spacetimes that have been designed to systemically exclude them.

More practically, this means for us that we understand our processes of creating more access as never complete. We cannot make spaces that are fully accessible to all their potential guests: many of their access needs are often not known to us (nor to them sometimes) and many of our own abilities as hosts are sometimes limited. There will always be bodies excluded because of their disabilities. We own up to those we can't include, try to show up better next time and continue to work towards creating more access.

Spaces

H&D hopes to make the spaces it hosts, facilitates and presents as accessible as possible. Studio, Website, Activities

Studio

• Our studio is located in ....
• Step free access (but unreliable elevator)
  • the evelvator is reliable. its just that the button needs to be hold pushed.. its stops as soon as you stop pushing. so if someone has difficulties doing that its not a helpful elevator
• Uneven ground floor
• 1st floor with holes in it (not safe for creatures with smaller feet and creatures wearing heels
• Bathroom inaccessible
• ...

Website

• Following all WAI-ARIA reccomendations for accessibility
  • semantic html markup
  • aria-labelling
  • keyboard navigation
  • accessibility tree / alternative navigation for assistive devices
  • attention to different operating system settings (dark mode, inverted colours, higher contrast, reduced transparency, reduced motion, etc...)
  • screenreader / assistive device testing
• writing image descriptions when possible
• Other non-standard accessibility consideration for the website?
  • ...
• translation when possible
  • our website is in english as it's main language
  • we do our best to translate all pages to dutch when we can
  • translations are available in other language that are on a page by page basis (german, korean, french, etc...)
• ..

Communications

• language in newsletters and social media
• image descriptions
• translation to dutch when possible
• simple language when we can

Activities

• each activity has dedicated time and resources to making it more accessible
  • this is different per activity, depends on context, scale, participants, situation...
• we try to ask what participants need when an activity involves signups and known participants
• paying attention to accessibility of spaces when choosing host locations
• ....

Publishing

• trying to experiment with accessibility in each publishing activity in a different way
• ...

Credits and References

We'd like to thank all our past and future collaborators