Reid Davenport on This Year's #TechInclusion in SF

By Reid Davenport

Wayne Sutton and Melinda Epler at Tech Inclusion SF

A lot of the time, when people with disabilities are presented at conferences or forums, there is a great deal of tokenism complemented with physical inaccessibility. This was not my experience at Tech Inclusion 2017.

ASL interpreters were at every session, there was captioning on the main stage and there was plenty of wheelchair seating (not just in the back and in the front, but in the middle too!). From the moment I got there, I felt welcome and like I was wanted.

There was an ample amount of disability-focused sessions (I’d say more than a dozen over two days) and the conversations were rich and engaging.

I also surprisingly found a robust disability community at the conference.  From Dr. Cynthia Overton of the American Institutes for Research to Professor Richard Ladner of the University of Washington to Brittany Déjean of AbleThrive, I was thrilled at all the people that represented my community at Tech Inclusion.