Acknowledgements

Most of these aren’t original ideas – this is a collection of other people's ideas, either from conferences I've attended myself or followed online.

I’ve tried to include credit on the individual ideas. This page also has a list of everybody who gave me an idea or suggestion that went on the list, or at least as many as I can remember.

Conferences

Many of these ideas are drawn from conferences I’ve attended, including:

• AlterConf
• Monki Gras
• PyCon UK
• You Got This

Particular shoutout for AlterConf, which did a huge amount of work to make a really inclusive event, most of which was done by Ashe Dryden. It remains the gold standard by which I judge inclusivity at other conferences (including my own).

And some other conferences which I haven’t attended, but seen from afar:

• Devopsdays London
• DjangoCon Europe
• GitHub Universe
• Nine Worlds
• Open Source Bridge
• Write the Docs
• XOXO
• !!Con (pronounced “bang bang con”)

People

Lots of people have given me ideas or suggestions for this list, including:

• Ada Powers used her Twitter network to build a big list of accessibility fails, some of which weren’t on my list yet.
• Ashe Dryden, who created and ran AlterConf
• Daniele Procida, director of PyCon UK 2018 and 2019
• Eric Holscher’s ideas and blog posts about breaking cliques at networking events
• Ernest W. Durbin III, who’s written about drinks at conferences
• Jay Castello took notes at AlterConf Dublin
• Jenny S-T, who provided useful feedback and advice
• Jenny Wong talked about accessible communities at AlterConf London
• kaberett has given plenty of useful advice on accessiblity, particularly around disability and gender
• Lorna Mitchell, who talked about being a keyboard-only user at Monki Gras 2019
• Nicolas Steenhout has written several useful articles about conference accessibility
• Owen Campbell, another PyCon UK organiser and inventor of the “bucket brigade” lightning talk lottery
• Paula Kennedy, one of the organisers of Devopsdays London and a speaker at Monki Gras 2019
• Peter Inglesby, director of PyCon UK 2016 and 2017
• Samantha Burke, who helps run the Diversity & Inclusion programme for Monki Gras
• Sapphire Mason-Brown’s notes on AlterConf London.
• Sebastian Morr’s Twitter notes about AlterConf.
• Swarna Podila, who spoke about community-building at Monki Gras 2019
• Tom Bennett wrote about running a crèche at a UK Education conference
• Wick’s Twitter notes about AlterConf ticketing.

Further links and reading

• Paula Kennedy’s Monki Gras 2019 talk about running Devopsdays London.

• Sapphire Mason-Brown’s blog post about accessibility at AlterConf London.

• Jay Costello’s notes from AlterConf Dublin. The notes from Jenny Wong’s talk Building an Accessible Community were especially helpful, and the video of their talk is available on YouTube.

• Nicolas Steenhout’s blog post How to make your conference accessible – and why you should care! overlaps with some of what I’m saying, and gave me several other new ideas.

• The Less Obvious Conference Checklist by Sasha Romijn is another useful resource.

• Several Twitter threads from different AlterConf’s, including by Sebastian Morr and Wick’s description of the ticketing.

  All the replies to Ada Powers’ tweet asking for conference accessibility fails.