You’ve attended a few conferences, watched a lot of presentations, and decided it’s time to give a talk of your own! As someone who has both given talks at conferences, and sat on the proposal review board for others, I’m here to tell you what I’ve learned and to encourage you to submit your own talk proposals.

How do you go about doing that?

First, find your niche.

Figure out what you want to talk about. What are you passionate about? What kind of unique perspective do you bring to this topic? That doesn’t mean that if someone has written about it, or presented about it before, that you should completely avoid the topic.

However, you should think about how your presentation is different than the content which already exists, and what new example, viewpoint, or data you’re bringing to the topic (your view on a particular thing counts as a unique viewpoint!). Also, you don’t have to start out by presenting for an hour. Conference talks range from 5 minute lightning talks (a great way to get an introduction to conference speaking!) to 15–30 minute presentations, to 2+ hour workshops or panels. Figure out what you’re comfortable doing.

Then, based on your idea, figure out where to give your talk. You can look at online lists such as CallbackWomen or Paper Call for CFPs (or Call for Presentations/Papers) or try looking at some of the following:

• Internal company presentations (Can you host a lunch & learn event? What about an annual conference your company might host?)
• Look at past conferences you’ve attended (or search for conferences based on the topics you’re interested in).
• Get involved in local organizations, meet the organizers, and ask to present (Meetup is great for this).

Then, write your proposal.

Follow the rules outlined in the call for speakers. Seriously. You’d be surprised how many people don’t do that, and while some reviewers or conferences are willing to overlook that, don’t take the chance. Just follow the requirements.

1. Avoid the sales pitch (if you work for a sales-driven organization). It’s fine to use your organization to illustrate a case study, but avoid making your proposal a giant advertisement.
2. Write a great title. Pick something catchy, but that clearly explains what your talk will be about. Think about your title as if you were an attendee. Would the title draw you in? Does it tell you enough about the proposal to pique your interest? I like puns, but that’s a personal (and surprisingly polarizing) choice. The title for the last talk I gave was 'Shooting Phish in a Barrel: Practical Proposals for Reducing Phish Click Rates'
3. Write the abstract. If a proposal is accepted, the abstract is often used (unedited) as the description of your talk the audience will see, so make sure it caters to the audience (not to the conference reviewers). Think about what matters to them. Tell a story, but keep it brief. Clearly explain what your talk is about (why do I want to go?), who the talk is aimed at (is this talk a good fit for me?), and what your audience will gain from attending (what did I learn from this talk? What can I do now, that I couldn’t before?).

Personally, I recommend the following structure:

State the problem [Sentence one]. What did you do to approach the problem? [Sentences 2 and 3]. Actionable takeaway for the audience [Sentences 4 and 5]. That's it! Don't use more than 5 sentences, and you can usually do it in less. If it takes you more than that to explain your proposal, it probably isn’t well thought through.

5. Most proposals consist of an abstract and a bio, but some will have additional sections (justification, outline, etc.). For these additional sections, keep in mind the same key principles as above.

6 . Create a bio. This is an opportunity for you to highlight your relevant experience and explain to the organizers (and later attendees) why YOU are the best person to give this talk. What experience do you have that directly relates to this talk? Here’s a helpful place to start (it's my favorite template for writing a conference bio).

Here's mine from a recent conference: Megan Kaczanowski is a Threat Intelligence Analyst at S&P Global who works closely with the threat hunting and incident response teams to protect organizations from emerging cyber threats. Megan understands that delivering effective threat intelligence isn’t about utilizing the latest industry buzzwords – it’s about delivering curated, actionable intelligence to the relevant stakeholders.

In addition to her experience in threat intelligence, Megan runs the simulated phishing training program at her organization and co-leads a Security Champions user awareness initiative. Megan holds a BA in Economics and Political Science from the University of Michigan. In her free time, she enjoys rock climbing and is a PADI certified scuba diver.

7. When you’re finished, check your spelling, grammar, and formatting. Use an app like Hemingway or Grammarly or ask a friend to review it! Little mistakes can impair a reviewer’s ability to read and understand your proposal and you want to make it as easy to read and understand as possible. This is particularly important if you're writing a proposal in a language which isn't your native language. Often reviewers have very little time to look at each proposal simply because there are so many proposals. Make their job easy.

8. Feel free to submit more than one proposal, if the conference is something you’re very interested in (but make sure that all of the topics are something you’re excited about, and feel comfortable speaking on).

Still looking for help? Check out these resources:

• How to Write a Successful Conference Proposal
• Writing a Conference Proposal
• What Your Conference Proposal is Missing
• Conference Prompts: Or How to Submit Proposals and Influence People
• What I learned from reading 429 conference proposals
• Is Your Proposal Good Enough?
• How to Write a Compelling Proposal

If your talk is rejected, don’t worry! This can happen for many reasons, and doesn’t mean that your proposal was necessarily bad. Perhaps there were 4 other proposals on the same topic. Perhaps the conference organizers are looking for a range of different tracks/experience levels/topics and yours wasn’t a good fit this time.

Whatever the reason, if the conference provided feedback, read it and use it to improve your next proposal. If not, ask for it. They might not have time to provide feedback for every single proposal, but there’s no harm in asking, and feedback will help you improve faster. Don’t let one rejection discourage you. Everyone gets proposals rejected. Improve your proposal, or write a new one, and try again!

If your talk is accepted, congratulations!

Time to write your talk. Here’s some resources to help:

• Practical Tips for Creating Great Slides
• Practical Tips for Being a Great Speaker
• Toastmasters (an organization which can help you improve your public speaking skills)
• How to Improve Your Communication Skills

We all learn about web accessibility at different points in our career. That means a lot of time you are not on the same page as your teammates. I had the privilege a couple of months ago to speak at Pingboard about accessibility. Our goal was to get the whole team at the same knowledge starting point. If we all have a basic understanding of whom web accessibility affects and how it affects them, we can ship better experiences.

You probably find yourself in the same opportunity at your company to present on accessibility. So I would like to do two things to help: I am going to give you my presentation as a starting point and walk you through the points I like to touch on.

You probably find yourself in the same opportunity at your company to present on accessibility. …I am going to give you my presentation as a starting point and walk you through the points I like to touch on.

Remind the team that you are talking about real people.

When we read accessibility documentation, it is easy to forget the human element. It makes sense because you are reading technical docs meant to influence code. It is great to start with this shared definition:

A person with a disability: A person who has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activity.

We use this to establish friendly dialog. People do not want to be called “disabled”. They want to be called their name. We also need to clarify how wide of a range disabilities can be. Try expanding past assumptions early on with these points:

• Some disabilities come at birth, some come later.
• Some disabilities are permanent, some are temporary.
• Some disabilities always affect, some come and go.
• Some disabilities are visible, some are invisible.

Go over some disability categories with emotional experiences and quick tips.

Now that we have established that we are talking about people, it is time to talk about their experiences. I like to mix this section with quick tips for common disability categories. Remind your audience that there are way more disabilities than you are covering. They are difficult to categorize, which is why the technical documentation focuses on the solutions.

Something you will notice about the presentation is that there is a lot of video and audio. I find it more effective to have those with disabilities speak more than me about the issue. The multimedia in the presentation makes it possible for those people to not even have to be there.

Visual

I love to share this video of Tommy Edison using a screenreader because he keeps things lighthearted, but also goes through the whole process of sending an email. After the video, you can point out that fellow Mac users can try their screenreader with CMD + F5 at anytime.

Quick tips:

• People with dyslexia prefer to override font settings.
• People with low vision need to be able to zoom correctly.
• People with color blindness need an overall color contrast ratio of 4.5:1. Text 19px or larger can have a ratio of 3:1.
• People with color blindness need labels and patterns for differentiations.

Auditory and Seizure

Auditory disabilities are easier to talk about with digital product teams. Remind your team that all audio should be paired with visual cues and captions. Encourage the team to do content audits to check all videos for closed captioning.

Strobing, flickering, and flashing can trigger seizures. Other triggers include animations longer than 250ms, parallax, and images moving under text.

Motor

There are two demos I like to show teammates when it comes to motor disabilities. The first is hidden inside a longer video. A fellow named Gordin Richins shows what it is like to use a mouth stick. It is an older video, but I try to point out that new technologies can be more expensive.

The second video is a wholesome video of an eye tracking product. These are great because they can provide mouse capabilities to those with motor disabilities. However, we should still make all experiences keyboard accessible to be safe.

Cognitive

Cognitive disabilities can be difficult to convey. For this last category, I stuck with quick tips to keep the presentation alternative between facts and emotion. Here are the quick tips I share:

• For memory, keep processes short and remind users of context as much as possible.
• For problem-solving, error messages should be as explanatory as possible.
• For attention, use visual cues to highlight the most important points or sections of content.
• For reading, linguistic, and verbal comprehension, provide supplemental media that helps processes.

Emphasize how common disabilities actually are.

Did you know that one out of five people in the US have at least a one disability? (source) It may not seem like that in the workplace, but we should consider why. This is the point of the presentation when people should understand invisible disabilities. Invisible disabilities can be hidden from the naked eye. Here is a great interview where Carly Medosch talks about working with an invisible disability:

NPR: People with 'Invisible Disabilities' Fight for Understanding

This story is a great transition to a big question: What can we as enterprise software teams do to help those with disabilities?

Well, 79% of people of a working age in the US have employment. Only 41% of people of a working age in the US that have disabilities have employment. (source) If more jobs were accessible, that gap would close. This means that we as enterprise software teams can make it our mission to close the gap!

End with the legal risk for those that need extrinsic motivation.

It may not feel great, but some people may still need more reasoning about why the team should work towards accessible experiences. This is why I like to close the presentation on the legal implications of accessibility.

ADA Title 3 lawsuits in federal court: 2722 in 2013, 4436 in 2014, 4789 in 2015, 6601 in 2016, 7663 in 2017, 10163 in 2018. https://www.adatitleiii.com/2019/01/number-of-ada-title-iii-lawsuits-filed-in-2018-tops-10000/

In 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed. This provides those with disabilities the same protection that’s given in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Section 508 says digital experiences in government departments and agencies have accessibility requirements.

Lawsuits continue to grow saying that the ADA also covers digital experiences from any company. Over 10,000 lawsuits were filed in 2018 alone. In fact, one of those cases is headed towards supreme court.

Be a part of the good fight.

Are you considering presenting to your team on web accessibility? You really should. You don’t have to be an expert and it’s okay if not everyone listens to you. Every effort to make the web a more friendly place is worth it.

I hope these resources helped you shape a future presentation. Please steal everything from me (but keep the citations).

If you appreciate this, please consider voting for my SXSW talk idea. I want to teach product managers, designers, and everyone else about progressive web apps. The cool thing about PWAs, is that a lot of accessibility criteria is baked in! If you wanna learn more, check out the video below.

Please take minute to vote for my talk and share it with others.

Got any other good resources for accessibility presentations? Please share them in the comments or tweet me them at @seejamescode. I will retweet the best ones!