Accessibility

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Welcome to Hackers & Designers' access note. This access note is being updated as we continue to learn and deepen our understanding. The last update was on 14/05/2024. When announcing our activities, we might reiterate specific access details. If you are ever unsure, please write to us.

Hackers & Designers aims to contribute to more access with regards to the spaces in which we convene, the information we provide, the digital tools and platforms we build and contribute to, the activities we facilitate, the publications we make and all the projects we embark on. Creating access is an ongoing process and there is always room for improvement. In the case that you notice a situation where you believe someone's needs could have been accommodated better, we'd like to invite you to inform us through this form. We wish to do our best to reduce barriers.

Spaces

Studio

The Hackers & Designers Studio is located at NDSM-plein 127, inside the NDSM-werf in Amsterdam North-West. The nearest bus stop is Klaprozenweg (buses 391 and 394), approximately 300 meters away. The NDSM ferry stop is approximately 400 meters away. The ferry F4 to Central Station takes 15 minutes. The ferry F7 to Pontsteiger takes 7 minutes. There is a supermarket and bakery near this stop. The last years have seen a lot of construction in and around the Amsterdam North-West area, creating many diversions. We expect this to continue for the coming years.

You will recognize the main entrance of the NDSM-werf by its big blue door. It is usually open during the day and closed in the evenings. Beyond this door, the ground floor is rather uneven and the first floor, where the H&D studio is located, is a grid-like structure and has holes. Getting to the first floor can be achieved by a series of staircases scattered in the building and an elevator initially designed for carrying heavy loads. This elevator can only be operated by pressing and holding the button without releasing. The bathroom in the H&D studio is gender neutral but not wheelchair-accessible.

The NDSM-werf is a warehouse shared with many makers, artists and craftspeople. This means that there will often be loud noises. The studio is an indoor space inside a larger warehouse. This can lead to the air becoming stuffy. In the months of November and December, the heating can take some days to kick up and it can be a bit cold.

More information on reaching the space can be found on our contact page.

Website

The Hackers & Designers website is designed following the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). The document markup is semantic, labeled and attuned for assistive devices. Special attention has been given to the accessibility tree and keyboard navigation, allowing for multiple forms of navigation across the site and its pages. The website has been tested against, and optimized for different screen readers. It is made to attune to different operating-system-level settings. A user might have preferences such as higher contrast, inverted colors, bigger text, reduced transparency, dark mode and reduced motion. Furthermore, special attention is being directed towards writing image descriptions. We understand many of the WCAG guidelines are mere standards and are incomplete. We therefore welcome any feedback or points of improvement for our website.

The pages on this site are presented in English as a default and translated to Dutch when possible. Some articles, often relating to activities and happenings outside the Netherlands are provided in context-specific languages such as French, German or Korean

Activities & Publishing Projects

Since 2023, all of H&D structurally dedicates a portion of the available resources to making projects and activities more accessible. Be it a workshop, publication, summer camp or website, every project requires context-specific processes of making access. Thus, H&D's approach to making access varies from project to project and depends on the situation, scale and participants in the project. For example, we ask about participants' access needs prior and during an activity. We also pay particular attention to the accessibility of the spaces we facilitate our activities in. We also apply a sliding-scale for admission and contribution fees to our activities and yearly summer camp to make participation possible for more people. Companions, assistants and service dogs are always welcome. We welcome children and babies in our spaces.

In our publishing activities, foregrounding "access" with every edition, becomes an opportunity to experiment and discover surprising outcomes. For example, we used syllable-based highlighting to create a dyslexia-friendly reading experience in the 2024 Bulletin #1.

Approach

We believe that a process of making access starts with posing the question "What do you need to access this space?". Working collectively and across difference we want to acknowledge power imbalances when it comes to negotiating everyone's needs. We are looking towards crip and disability justice as a point of departure for taking accessibility no longer as an afterthought, but making it inherent to our practice.

Processes and conversations around making access have to center crip and disabled voices and reject assimilationist and techno-solutionist approaches. These approaches have historically built and replicated a world in which, disabled bodies are excluded. An anti-assimilationist approach to creating access departs from the perspective that it is not the bodies that are disabled, but that it is the world we inhabit that has been designed to systematically exclude them.

Credits and References

Our efforts to create more accessible activities and write this note are informed and inspired by the work of:

• MELT (Ren Loren Britton + Iz Paehr)
• Casco

These resources have been useful to us:

• John Lee Clark: Against Access
• Sliding scale
• Ableist language (via our friends from MELT)
• Rehearsing Access
• Johanna Hedva's access mote
• Mia Mingus "Access Intimacy"