Upcoming Panel with UCLA at RightsCon 2023, Opportunity for Self Advocates, and More

For the second year in a row, Ability Central will present at RightsCon, the leading international summit on human rights in the digital age. Ability Central’s panel will unveil a new study, titled Social Media Access for All. The study, conducted by the Disability Studies Inclusion Lab at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and funded by Ability Central, explores accessibility awareness and utilization on social media platforms.

The online session, Stop Scrolling! Start Making Social Media Accessible for All, will share findings from the UCLA study and share best practices for utilizing accessibility features across various social media platforms. Featuring panelists from Ability Central and UCLA, this session will cultivate space for authentic discussion, offer hands-on tips to participants, and collect feedback to add value and direction to the study's expansion.

The Ability Central panel is on Thursday, June 8th from 10:30-11:30 am (PDT). View the complete RightsCon session list (you can find us under Human Rights-Centered Design, although the time slot has not yet been shared publicly) and get your tickets today. RightsCon encourages participation from all stakeholders and the summit has tiered pricing options, including free tickets for those attending online.

When we talk about disability, why don’t we listen to the experts – people with disabilities? Policy experts, educators, and healthcare providers speak for and about us all the time. It’s time for us to tell our own stories. That’s the idea behind the Self-Advocates Speakers Bureau, organized by Disability Voices United (DVU) with funding from Ability Central.

If you want to use your story to build up a disability rights movement in California, then DVU wants you in their Speakers Bureau! Together, we can change the stories we tell about disability. And if we change those stories, we can change the world.

Learn about the Speaker’s Bureau on the DVU website, including requirements to join, training sessions, the application process, and more!