“So I finally did it and applied to give a talk at Code, the awesome front-end focused conference run by John Allsop and the Web Directions crew.
From the beginning of the CFP application, the process was smooth, once accepted Web Directions had a human hand hold you with information, flights, and accommodation. That was a nice bonus as I had been in America volunteering so the offer to cover costs came at a great time.
The conference was very professional, registration was simple, assistance and help with the silly questions I always have was very friendly. The first day was filled with a high caliber of talks and the state of JavaScript. After the talks, we were taken to a speakers dinner down the road. The event had a relaxed feel and the seating pattern allowed for conversations with old friends and new ones.
The second day was my talk, I must admit I was nervous I had so much to cover and felt I could have planned out the talk better. I really hate it when health issues eat into time planed for conferences and talks however I have come to accept it as part of the parcel of traveling to conferences with my ailments.
The talk was received well and I got some good feedback. It covered how the accessibility API works within the browser and the inherent issues with JavaScript frameworks because of the limitations of the accessibility API model and DOM interaction, or lack thereof.
The talk was not videoed however the slides are up, I am aiming to do a webinar of some sorts of the DOM/A11y API interaction model in 2018 as it seems a lot of developers have been asking me to cover this topic more. Once we as developers understand the constraints and why they occur in our models then we can effectively code to accommodation them or around them \O/
https://webdirections.org/code/