December 6, 2011

A11yLDN MeetUp: Video now on Vimeo

On Thursday evening last week I made a short presentation at the a11yLDN (Accessibility London) MeetUp on Aversive Disablism and Hierarchies of Impairment, two concepts from Disability Studies that I believe have powerful applications for web accessibility practitioners and activists amongst others. This was a great collaborative event, with diverse presentations from some excellent speakers. Despite working on a shoestring, organisers have now made videos of each presentation available on Vimeo. My talk is embedded below.

a11yLDNmeetup 01.12.2011: Disability Studies and Accessibility: Two Critical Concepts by Sarah Lewthwaite from a11yLDN on Vimeo.

Mine is a pocket size talk at 10 minutes, unfortunately the sound quality is quite low in places so if you want to know more about Avserive Disablism and Hierarchies of Impairment in an alternative format please consider at the following links:

Aversive Disablism: Subtle prejudice against disabled people. A blog post synopsis and link to Aversive Disablism resources, including Mark Deal’s PhD Thesis.
Hierarchies of Impairment. A blog post synopsis and link to Hierarchies of Impairment by Mark Deal, in the journal of Disability and Society.
Blog post on Accessibility and Hierarchies of Impairment
Blogging Against Disablism blog post on Web Development and Aversive Disablism.

Other presentations from the a11yLDN event are available on the A11yLDN video account. I highly recommend having a look at the presentation schedule from the day on the Accessibility London Website and browsing the videos according to your interests. In addition, you may want to subscribe to the website feeds, twitter or follow the organisers (Makayla Lewis and Graham Armfield) twitter accounts – as there are plans to repeat the event on a monthly basis, with the next meeting due in January.

November 23, 2011

Event: #a11yLND Meetup December 1st 2011

A quick update for you this morning: firstly, welcome to my new blog – I’ve been migrating 32 Days Remaining to Slewth Press at a new and bespoke URL: slewth.co.uk. This process will soon have its own dedicated post reflecting on the particular steps and plugins I’ve used to make the WordPress work for me. In the meantime, any formative feedback is very welcome, so please consider a comment below, tweet or email via the Contact page.

Secondly: I’m delighted to announce that I will be delivering a lightning presentation at the Accessibility London (#a11yLDN) Meetup. I’ll be delivering at 10 minute talk on “Disability Studies and Accessibility: Two Critical Concepts”. During the presentation I’ll introduce Aversive Disablism and Hierarchies of Impairment and the relevance of these concepts for Web Developers.

The event is free and runs from 7pm-9pm on Thursday December 1st at City Univeristy, London. It features a very distinguished group of presenters and looks to be a very interesting and stimulating event. To find out more visit or register visit event bright who will release the final batch of tickets today. In case it’s useful, please note, in addition to the Accessibility London website, there is also a twitter account @a11yLDNMeetUp for live updates and further links. I hope to see you there.