evoHaX will bring together students from various universities around Philadelphia to develop web accessibility solutions in a 24 hour long Hackathon. This event focuses on creating awareness about web accessibility among student developers, and tackling the challenges people with disabilities face accessing information on the web. Subject matter experts will be present at the event to share their knowledge and experiences. The event will help build a collaborative environment where student developers can showcase their skills by creating apps, plugins and products that will improve lives and make a real difference.
Registrations
Registrations are accepted through colleges and universities only and are free of charge. Each school is allowed one team of up to five members. Elementary, secondary, high school and PhD students are not eligible to participate.
Registration begins: March 16th. Registration deadline: April 1st.
Non-participants are welcome to attend by RSVPing through this TicketLeap page.
Event Schedule
Friday, Apr. 17: Kickoff event @ Benjamin's Desk Talks, Food, Beverages, Music, Introductions
Saturday, Apr. 18: The Hack @ Benjamin's Desk Breakfast, Rules, Hacking, Lunch, Hacking, Snacks, and Special Events
Sunday, Apr. 19: Finale @ Benjamin's Desk Breakfast, Hacking, Lunch, Hacking, 'Stop coding call', Presentations, Snacks, Judging, Awards Ceremony, Pictures, Wrap-up
Speakers
Deborah Dahl
Dr. Dahl will discuss recent activities at the W3C aimed at improving web accessibility for people with cognitive disabilities such as Down Syndrome, dementia, aphasia and dyslexia.
Richard Burns
Dr. Burns will introduce how information graphics in popular media are often specifically designed with a communicative purpose along with his prototype system that can automatically hypothesize the intended message of a graphic, and briefly discuss the probabilistic reasoning that it performs.
LeeAnn Kinney
LeeAnn will give a brief overview on the principles of accessible front-end design and show how easy it is to start building a better web experience for everyone.
Marco Maertens
Marco will highlight web accessibility concerns that are raised when dealing with mobile devices and its affects on decisions about responsive web design when using single codebase for different kinds of devices - in the light of the recently released draft guidelines on WCAG 2.0 and the mobile web.
Anat Caspi
Dr. Caspi will be talking about Technology Innovation in the realm of accessibility and challenge the guiding economic models which have made it between difficult and impossible to innovate in this space even though there has never been a better time to introduce accessible technologies to end users.
Let's make the web a better place.