CSUN Rises in San Diego, Shining Light on Accessibility

This week would have been a great time to be in San Diego, CA.

It's not just for the weather – though 13 to 21 degrees Celcius and sunshine sounds glorious given our winter – but especially to be a fly on the wall for a great meeting of minds in the world of accessibility.

Today marks the final day of the California State University, Northridge Center on Disabilities' 30th Annual International Technology and Persons with Disabilities Conference, known colloquially as CSUN. It's the largest of its kind in the world.

All week researchers, developers and other interested parties presented on a variety of topics in accessibility falling into six broad categories: education, transportation, independent living, law and policy, entertainment, and employment and workplace.

In particular, the presentation titles that caught my eye were "Real-Time Conversations: From TTY to Real-Time Text (RTT)," (this would seem to make communication between Deaf and hearing persons significantly easier), "How Inexperienced Webworkers Can Author Quality Image Description," (this made me think of BeMyEyes and similar services); and, close to the hearts of Echidnas, "Why Drupal Accessibility is Helping it to Dominate Education & Government." Though the presentation list this year appears to my eye heavily weighted towards accessibility for the blind, those with dyslexia, aphasia, learning disabilities, and mobility impairments are all represented.

In addition to these shorter presentations, there is also a pre-conference set of longer, more instructional and hands-on sessions. These run for half or full days and cover more general topics. This year highlights include "Beyond Code and Compliance: Integrating Accessibility Across The Development Life Cycle," "Accessible documents," and "5 Steps to Successful Implementation of [Augmented Alternative Communication] Apps in the Classroom."

I was intrigued to learn that the conference produces an annual journal comprising all research-based papers that were presented at the conference itself. It will be released in the spring.

As with any niche market conference, CSUN will be full of vendors. The manufacturers of all the commercial software I own caught my eye, as did the manufacturer of my white cane, but a company that provides a captioned telephone and vendors providing employment services also stood out.

All told, CSUN sounds like a fascinating opportunity for further understanding of accessibility and technology. To review conference proceedings, be sure to look for the #CSUN15 tag on your social media platform of choice.