Overview

Long a matter of lip service, accessibility in design is of paramount importance. While most designers agree that technologies should adapt to mirror the diversity of their users, there’s much confusion about what it means to make something accessible. Does following the WCAG suffice? Is accessible design also inclusive? Can current design technologies accommodate multiple languages and alphabets at scale? These are some of the questions we’ll tackle at the next sessions of Friends of Figma Denver.

We’ll start the evening with a panel discussion on the state of accessibility and inclusivity in design. After a brief QA, a few panelists will show how they’ve made their designs more inclusive by using Figma.

Join us for an evening of thought-provoking discussion and hands-on learning.

Panelist Bios

Anna E. Cook (she/her) is a Senior Product Designer and Accessibility Advocate at Recurly. Over the past eight years, Anna has specialized in building inclusive experiences and implementing scalable systems to support accessible practices in product teams.

Raven Douglas (they/them) is a designer building products and design systems that serve people better. Having autism and schizophrenia, Raven is familiar with how apps/sites can be inaccessible (or outright abusive) to neurodivergent folks and advocates to change that. Currently: Designer @DigitalOcean, Organizer @FoF Design Systems.

Bruno Figueiredo always loved to sketch and draw, ever since he can remember, but design wasn’t always an option. Grew up in northern Portugal in the middle of the textile industry, and started working on textile design when he was 15. He then studied Multimedia Design in College, where he started to get his first few freelance customers. Opened a small design and video business and when he learned he was a poor financial manager he hit the road and joined OutSystems, where he's been working since 2016 and where he's grown and learned a lot more than he could ever imagined and where he now leads the Brand and Creatives Team.

Chris Kark (moderator) is a product designer with a background in content strategy and teaching foreign languages. He strives to create flexible user experiences that humanize the technologies they inhabit. Currently a senior product designer @ThrivePass.

Crystal Preston-Watson is a quality and accessibility engineer at Salesforce.org. She believes that accessibility is a human right and passionate about building accessible and inclusive applications for everyone.

Jeremy Tinianow (he/him) is a design system designer with a strongly held belief that accessible products and experiences make things better for everyone.

Natalie Patrice Tucker has nearly two decades of experience building the accessible web. Committed to a web that works for everyone, she spends her days (and far too many nights and weekends) serving as a subject matter expert in the area of web accessibility and training an army of developers and stakeholders to carry the charge.