OZeWAI online event - Ask the Professionals - 26 March 2024

Introduction

OZeWAI has moved from running an annual conference to partnering with many in-person and online conferences and offering membership benefits as part of individual and organisation membership tiers. Benefits include online events to ask the tough accessibility questions of the professional accessibility specialists. 

Panel topic: Inclusive research and how to connect and build relationships with people with lived experience who want to be involved in research/usability testing as participants. 

This panel event will bring together three accessibility specialists who are involved in inclusive research or participated in research or usability testing, for you to:

• Ask questions from the experts  
• Share knowledge of similar issues
• Find where to get help with accessibility advice and expertise

Session access requirements

The session agenda and access details will be shared 2 days before the event. This is a remote online event using Zoom.

Please email info@ozewai.org if you wish to share any tools, communication methods or anything else we should consider to ensure you can fully participate in the session.

Thank you from the OZeWAI Committee

Panelists:

Irith Williams (She/Her)

Irith is a freelance Strategic Designer and co-founder of the Inclusive Research Workshops. Irith’s special interest is Health as a domain for design. In the past, Irith founded the slack workspace ‘Designing for Health in Australasia’ a multidisciplinary Community of Practice for design in health. 

Irith practices as an Accessibility and Inclusion advocate and as an educator in trauma-informed approaches for design.

Irith is a member of the Consumer Health Forum of Australia's Digital Special Interest Group and frequently works at the intersection of product design research and academic research.

Ricki Spencer (They/Her) M.Ed. GDCD, BSW. BA B.Ed.

Ricki is a qualified teacher, social worker, and Health Sociologist. They are currently completing Public Health at Federation University and Mental Health Education at Latrobe University.  They are a public advocate for people living with a disability, transgender, queerly ageing, mental health stigmatization and forced adoption who are important identities lived.

Ricki writes in areas of Transgender Health, Curriculum in Education & Power, Queer Intersectionality, and Digital Health and Health Equity through consumer participation. 

Ricki identifies as a transgender nonbinary woman with a strong social justice positionality. They are passionate about local planning issues in relation to access to health and services for marginalized groups in Victoria. Ricki has presented her finding to the Royal Commission for Disability Safety in trans and gender diverse reformation in health education and relationships for queer students with disabilities in Victorian Schools.

Ricki is the current chair for the policy steering committee for Aus PATH and Educational mentor for the Pinnacle Foundation. They sits on the Board of Lance TV (regional public media broadcasting) and has been appointed to the Health and Wellbeing Working Group of  Department of Equity Victoria, LGBTQA Taskforce Term 5.

Ricki has been hosting Bent TV Community Television for two years focusing on Community Voices in Australia and produced over 80 web podcast interviews for the Australian Sociological Association.

Yasmine Gray (She/Her)

Yasmine is Founding Director of GetAboutAble, an Australian social enterprise focused on improving travel & leisure opportunities for people with disability, both as customers and as employees in the sector. She is passionate about inclusive design and involvement of people with disability throughout design, testing and implementation processes.

Moderated by:

Brigitta (Bri) Norton (She/Her)

Bri is a Digital Strategist and User Experience and Accessibility specialist based in Canberra, Australia and has been an Accessibility Lead for both State and Federal Government. Bri has more recently co-developed inclusive research workshops to share how to include accessibility earlier in the project lifecycle which includes engaging with people with disability as part of inclusive research activities.

Amongst her professional experience with government agencies and local businesses, Bri has previously been the Australian Government Digital Transformation Agency’s Accessibility and Inclusivity Lead, is the co-chair and the conference convenor for Australia’s Web Accessibility Initiative OZeWAI.org, a Standards Australian Accessible ICT Procurement Committee Member and a member of the ResearchOps.Community Cheese Board. 

You can find her for a chat on BluSky and Twitter @algazel or LinkedIn.com/in/BriNorton or join her at the Canberra Accessibility and Inclusive Design Meetup.