On 29 October 2025, I gave my first ever presentation at A11y Camp in Melbourne.
This was a watershed moment for me, because while I’ve frequently attended the premier digital accessibility conference in Australia, I’d never had a talk proposal accepted before.
Presenting in person at a conference is always a bit thrilling and I must admit the actor in me comes out when I take the stage.
I was even more excited when I realised I would be the first presenter on Day One after the keynote “fireside chat” with Jennison Asuncion, co-founder of Global Disability Awareness Day. A nice warmup for what I planned as something just short of a rant to deliver to my colleagues and peers.
The title for my 20 minutes presentation was “PSA: Disabled is the New Normal”.
I focused on how the language we use affects how we think about people with disabilities and consequently how we regard digital accessibility. The central proposition was that we need to stop thinking of disability as abnormal, something to be fixed, and we must stop using language that draws on negative views of disability and accessibility.
In the process, I raised some points of history, definitions, attitudes, and prejudices. As I said, just short of a rant.
I injected a few jokes so as not to make it all doom and gloom and thankfully people laughed in the right places. The applause at the end was more forceful than I could have hoped for.
As it happened, morning tea break came just after me, so I had the chance to chat with people straight afterward.
Frankly, I was blown away by the positive response. People literally queued up to talk to me! There was a lot of “It’s about time someone said all this out loud” and “I’d never thought of it like that”.
Quite a few people also commented on the power of my delivery and praised my speaking ability. Rhetorical powers, for the win!
The video will be posted to YouTube in due course, but until then you can take in my slides.