CHAOSS Accessibility/Disability Inclusion WG, January 12, 2026 ![rw-book-cover](https://img.youtube.com/vi/fxFHUoIGBl0/maxresdefault.jpg) 🔗 **Source:** [CHAOSS Accessibility/Disability Inclusion WG, January 12, 2026](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxFHUoIGBl0) Yeah, we're officially we're officially um open for business. That sounds very mechanical, but yeah, >> good evening. Welcome to the meeting. Happy New Year. >> Welcome to 2026. >> Yeah. So, we're officially open for for work in Chaos Disability Inclusion and Accessibility Group. open for contributions and actually excited to be back. Uh we have like an ice breaker ice breaker question. So I don't know I'll just go ahead and share this to share the link to the chat. Sorry. I don't know. I don't know why it's like this. I'm supposed to be able to do whatever I like. Okay. I don't know why it's Anyway, it's it's not laptop, so it's looking weird. But yeah, like this whole you're sharing thing. I don't want it to be showing. I like weird. Anyway, so I just I just sent the the link so you can just write your name and describe your year with one word. I mean up until November I would say mine was traumat was interesting. It was amazing. Then November the October ending it became traumatic but that's cool I guess. But I'm happy we're back. Uh, so we're pretty much supposed to start with uh this um I guess I cannot do this weird magic that I want to do right now. So I just have to leave this. So you're supposed to start with strategies. So, this is basically like a new the same template anyway, but a new uh sheet, right? A new document sheet for the year. >> Okay. >> Yeah. So, I think the first thing we supposed to do this year is to actually plan. But before then, before then we had like I think we already talked about summary of what we achieved and what we did. I think I know I was in the meeting. I wasn't speaking but I was I was in the meeting where Brian was Brian was the chair like the chair for the meeting and we talked about the things we had achieved in 2025 and the things we couldn't achieve. But just to like jog our memory, I'll love to take us back to to that document. So that's the document here. I think the goods were for the things we had, excuse me, we had achieved. Um the things we couldn't are the ones that are in gray, but the green goods are like the things we achieved. So, and I think um supposedly like should I say supposedly or should I say accurately uh the things we do not actually we obviously have to carry them over to this year right hopefully first quarter depending on what the plans are like so we have like open source and accessibility webinar we didn't have that right and it would be great for us to have that this year. So I don't know where we want to place that. So we still have to go to our drawing board and see what we want to achieve in the first quarter. So um this meeting is supposed to be preemptively basically like um talking about what we want to achieve in a year as like in total like what we want to achieve in a year in total. Then when we done talking about what we want to achieve in a year, we can now break it down into quarters. Right? So given that we have little attendees right now, we I don't know how much of that we are able to achieve. But what we are going to do is we're going to just mention a few things we want to achieve this year. If it's not so hectic for you, can you like um take notes? Okay, let me let me open my laptop. >> Okay, cool. So, um so this basic the things we did not achieve. We did not um do the open source and accessibility webinar. We do not um we did not do an outreach program around Jango corn for Jango corn in 2025. We did not do like um a workshop. We wanted to do a work something like a workshop. I I I forgot what event we wanted to put that in. Okay. It was it's supposed to be either the workshop or the panel session and we did the panel session. So I think we were not like we did not achieve what we wanted to but we have to just carry this over because we couldn't do two at once so we can look for a way to weave in this workshop this year. Then we were supposed to do like a beyondtober fest but I don't think we did. We did not. Uh it was supposed to be like um after October 1st, but fortunately I wasn't so active and I don't know how I don't think we follow through with it. But we can still push that into this year's October first and make it like a title of the October first um event we want to do or whatever. something the same thing that um the the uh technical writing working group usually does something like that. So we can do so we can borrow a leaf from them and do something similar to that >> during October 1st or after >> during October 1st. We can do like it it can be either during or after but I'm just saying we can just weave it in during that during that period since we didn't do it this year. then documentary. I do not know the idea that Brian had for this. It would be great if he um Sorry about that. >> I don't know. >> What did you say about >> Sorry. >> Sorry. What did we say about the workshop? the workshop. Which of them? >> Yeah, we said that it was either supposed to be a workshop or the panel session, but we did a panel session for Chaos Corn Africa. So, we can do a workshop this year. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> So, um for the documentary, don't know the idea Brian had behind that, but we can always figure that out. We don't have to have everything figured out today. Today's our first meeting obviously and we still have like to get more ideas from other people attending. Looking forward to that in the next meeting. My bad. I did not get announced this. >> Yeah. For the documentary and every other like I I know that we obviously have more ideas. I'm just reading out some of the things we did not get to do last year that we might want to carry over this year. Yeah. But for this year, there are no exact plans yet. That's why we are having this meeting. So we can mention a few things then in our next meeting we can mention more then section them into quarters and arrange them in this document like so just like the one for 2025 currently is. So that's like basically it. So taking us back to the one we have for 2026 is a bl is obviously a blank sheet. The only thing I left here is the October first and documentary, but it's a blank sheet. So, we have an opportunity to plan what we want our year to look like. Right. So, um back to the main document. Sorry. Okay. So, so for um let's start with what we want to achieve first. I skipped the new year goals to strategies. So, but then what do we want to achieve this year though? What are we looking to achieve? Uh I think one of the things we to achieve is to have maybe more members in our working. >> Yeah. Then obviously get more people involved with improving accessibility in open source. maybe the accessibility audit and all of that. >> Yeah, I know that has been on a pause for a while. So hopefully pick we pick it up um this year and do it better and finish it up completely. not just the audits but the implementations of the audits that are be being done. Um, personally for me, I'd say one of the goals I would like us to achieve this year is to get more people with disabilities in our community. And it's a good thing that we are now open to um having different regions work on their accessibility. So it's not just Africa, we're open to Europe, Asia, uh LATAM. >> Yeah. and other how many how many regions are currently at I feel like I'm supposed to know >> I've mentioned Asia yeah Asia Africa Africa Asia Latam um Europe >> Europe >> just for I just mentioned >> not America yeah so um to improve on their accessibility and I'm hoping that we take our first step this year in um Chaos Con Europe as well to see if we can make the event as accessible as possible. That's one of the things we want to achieve as a working group or as a team this year, this January. So, it's one of the things that we'll also discuss and see how that worked out and how we can use the ideas and the methods to improve other regions. that one you already mentioned that but a little bit of uh a little addition on that uh our audits and making our projects accessible of course through implementing the audits that are being made whether it's the website or the the badging website the official website or the badging website or other projects that we are currently working on or have been working on in the asked. Uh, another thing would be to make the community more accessible. Of course, I already mentioned having more people with disabilities join the community, and that's only going to be possible if the accessibility if the community is more accessible. I mean, the the community is doing amazing when it comes to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and accommodating people of different um cultures and regions. We also want to be very um intentional and particular about accessibility and disabilities as well. I hope we'll get to achieve that. >> Sorry. >> Blessing is here now. >> Who live? >> Blessing. >> Hi blessing. Good evening. Happy you're here. >> Yeah. Thank you. How are you and >> I'm fine. I'm fine. How are you doing? >> I'm fine too, thanks. >> Okay. So, um we're just pretty much talking about goals we would want to achieve this year and some strategies we can take to achieve them. So, we also stroll back a bit to the strategies and the goals we have for 2025, the things we did and the things we want to be carrying over into 2026. Um, and now we're talking about the goals for now. So um I mentioned having okay read mentioned having more people in attendance in our meetings and improving and I talked about increasing more people with disabilities in the community making um the community accessible across all regions not just Africa but Asia Europe Latam um North America not um yeah, North America and also talked about working more intentionally on the accessibility auditing and projects to ensure that projects in access in in chaos are accessible. we are implementing uh the audits made. Yeah. By the team. So I think that's where we are currently. I know that um you might want to chip in some things. I know Brian obviously has a few things he would want to add as his goal. So it would be great if he can join maybe next two weeks. But from your own end, what are some goals you think will be great for us to achieve this coming 2026? >> Bring this 2026. >> Sorry, this this 2026. My bad. This 2026, it feels so new. This 2026. Yes. >> Okay. Yeah. Thanks for the brief. Um, well, I think one thing that I've thought of, not really like, um, I know I think we did a podcast, although I'm not sure I remember, but I think we did a podcast the last time, right? Can we still do that podcast? The reading first of we have like do we have persons with disabilities in chaos community that maybe they contributors ability. So maybe we can podcast, maybe do it like an episode to feature maybe one or two contributors that have disabilities in our community to to um get to hear from them how they I don't know how best is it like how they are able to navigate in tech something something like that despite their disabilities. Um I don't know just saying >> yes so I think >> please can anyone hear? >> Yes I'm speaking can you hear me? >> Yes I can hear you now. >> Okay. I said of course that is a great plan. We can continue with the podcast. Um, we do want to have more people with disabilities be more interactive in the group. I think one person with a disability reached out one time in the group. I don't know. But the thing is because of um should I say we are relatively new to being intentional with people with disabilities specifically in the group. Not like we are not open to them. Like there hasn't really been a lot of talk about them specifically. So it's possible that they haven't reached out. It's possible that we have people who have disabilities that have not reached out yet. But I think a few people actually did at one point. I think one one person even joined the meeting at one point too. So which is why one of the goals is to get them more people with disabilities in the community and active as well because we made the community accessible to them to be active. Right. So we can obviously do that following our followup calls with people with disabilities. Are people with disabilities in the group in the community currently? Maybe not a lot but we have worked with a lot of people with disabilities directly and indirectly. We have organized an outreaching people about open source inviting them and all. And as a followup many people attended Chaoscon Africa. So we cannot say we are new to interacting with people with disabilities. So of course we can have them feature in podcast. All we just have to do is like a follow up make um make sure we provide room for them to actually contribute to actual projects on issues. Make them feel like they are contributing to open source in full because even for people who do not have disabilities contributing on their first issue can be a lot. I don't know what your experience was but for me when I got into in fact when I got into chaos sorry when I got into open source in general I got in and got out because there was a whole lot going on and I was confused until I decided you know what let me try again >> confused about navigating you >> right so imagine how it is for us who do not identify people with disabilities or do not have disabilities now imagine how much more difficult it is for someone who probably has um a visual disability that is also finding it difficult to even navigate Slack or communicate and stuff like that. So, it has to be like a followup call to make sure that they are comfortable with what they know and they're willing to interact and contribute. So, and that's one of our goals for 2026. Like it doesn't matter the number even if it's one two three people who are actively contributing interested in chaos and want to continue to contribute it is a big deal right awareness is one thing teaching a whole lot of people and then people who are willing to actually join and do the work is another I think that's one thing we should prioritize so yeah podcast. I agree with you. It's not difficult to get people who are contributing to open source to speak in in the podcast, but we need to get them to actually contribute to Chaos actively and actually enjoy contributing, right? And I know I would give Chaos that hand. and I'll give them that thumbs up because chaos the maintainers in chaos know how to make people excited about contributing to open source in chaos whether it's their first issue or not. Personally, Kinsley and Ruth made it easy for me to make my first issue and continue to contribute to open source because of the great community. So, chaos is good with that. So, we need to like extend our hands now and make it even more inviting for people with disabilities. So yeah. So um so that's pretty much what we wanted to talk about. So um I don't know if we should talk about strategies now given that we I feel like we still have a whole lot of stuff want to talk about as it concerns what we want to contribute like sorry what we want to um achieve rather this year like the goals we want to achieve this year I don't know is it right for us to start start talking about strategies already okay how out we talk a little bit about the strategies we want to go we want to follow to achieve some of the goals that we have um mentioned let's say for instance increasing the attend attendees or the attendance of people in our meetings right how do we intend to do that please ideas because I really want our number to grow like last year we stopped we were like the highest number we had was seven. I'm hoping we get like up to at least 10 people this year and starting off strong and starting with just three of us. I need our numbers to grow. Like how do we do that? How do we get more people to join? Please, please, please guys take it away. Um any friend, you can start. How do we get our numbers? Um maybe it could help by talking about um having a brief chat about it in the general meeting and maybe just chiming in once or twice um in one or two meetings that um this is what we do or this is what we are doing. because there are a lot of working groups. It's quite easy to like get lost in everything that is going on in chaos and um yeah, I think maybe talking about it in the working group or maybe dropping a Slack message. I'm dropping a message on Slack in um I don't know which of the channels would that be the general channel or the random channel. I don't know. I'm just talking about it. We're looking for contributors. if you have disability or something or you're interested in improving PWD um or improving accessibility in open source um currently looking for more contri not Elizabeth um Peculiar does has for the education working group where she just randomly drops messages on Slack um channels about the working group. I think maybe we could try that because we only meet like once in two weeks. So it's it's a lot of time for someone to forget that this is happening and then the next time we get a reminder that the working group is actually active, it's 15 minutes or 30 minutes to or maybe an hour to the meeting. Yeah. So um maybe like help. Yeah. And maybe not just dropping a um maybe not just a Slack message but maybe dropping a message that maybe show an activity or something that we're trying to do so that anybody that's coming in has has already thought about what um in a way they want to contribute. Yeah. For instance is dropping message about the education working group. She doesn't just say education working group um are looking for contributors. She says if you want to um we need help with creating content and printing video content, writing script um um proof reading the script or whatever, editing the script. Um so we have issues open and all of that. Um join us in the education working group and all uh to contribute. She does that. So if you could add an activity to it and be like okay an accessibility audit is going on. If you'd be interested in improving accessibility on the chaos website or something reach out to us in the um join the accessibility working group then or if you have any questions also just leave room for questions also cuz you know some people might be curious just leave room for questions. So I think that's what I'm thinking about and yeah I think that could be one way to um increase attendance. I don't think we've tried that yet. So yeah this is so thorough and I agree with you like I do agree with you totally especially the part where we can actually seek out um attendees from the general meeting because like you said a whole lot of meetings are going on. In fact, it's weekly. We is meeting week by week. After this week, a series of meetings happen and then next week another series of meetings. So, if you're not careful, it's a lot. But I agree with you with the fact that if you have a a way to contribute or if you have something to do, then probably you might want to attend a meeting, which makes sense. So, I think one way is creating issues for people to contribute to. And I feel like we have like a few things we can work on to create issues whether it's accessibility audit or whether it's a blog blog could be not fully like our our work maybe technical writing but getting ideas from the accessibility working group to write can be a reason to join like the call so I do agree with you we can we can work on that so let's maybe put that down like creating one strategy to create um issues people can contribute to and invite them by attending general meetings. Great. I agree. Blessing. What other ideas? Could you chip in Hi V. Hi. Can you hear me? >> Yes, I can. >> Okay. Yes. So, for me, I'm going to say since we want to like um create more awareness. I don't know if we can also focus our attention like creating awareness on social media since we don't we don't have like a specific number of people that have disability. So I think there's any possibility that there might be persons with disabilities that have not even known about the community more yet. So maybe we can do more um um awareness on our um social media pages, maybe Twitter, LinkedIn if we do have an account there to invite like um persons with disability to the community more. Probably many of them don't know about the community yet. >> Yeah, that's true. I also thought about that like we can work with the social media theme and look for a way to bring back Twitter spaces maybe monthly depending on how long we want our publicity to last. you know, emphasis on uh inviting people with disabilities and people interested in working with people with disabilities in contributing to open source projects and accessibility issues which still boils down to having accessibility issues created that people can actually contribute to. So yeah, that makes sense. There's also um there's also this um is it like community? I don't know. I've not read full information about it. Accessibility Nigeria. It's something we can partner with them to look for. Hi, can you hear me? Sorry, I I needed to test something. So, I was saying that um if we can look up this there's an accessibility I don't know whether it's a group or something. It's called accessibility Nigeria. if you can partner with them to like get I think they have um open source contributors that have disabilities or something. Maybe we can look it up more, get more information and see if it's something we can partner with them to get um contributors that actually have the disability that can maybe help boost the awareness of our community. >> Oh, great. Um, now that you mentioned it, we have actually partnered with Accessibility Nigeria a few times. We partnered with them for the bridging >> Yeah. Chaos Con Africa and the other projects. Yeah. So we can also keep do that again where we partner with them to um invite people follow up on actually have a few contacts on of people who attended chaos gone. I think one of the things we wanted to do that we we didn't follow up on was to reach out to those people on like a third call and say okay you were available for the actress program you even followed up and attended um chaos con would you like to contribute to so so project which again boils down to having projects available for people to actually contribute to right while both the maintainer and team members are willing to actually work with these people to make their first issue contribution. So amazing idea partnering with accessibility Nigeria and other access accessibility organization or disability inclusion organizations um to invite people firstand to contribute social media awareness and Twitter spaces. Amazing. amazing ideas. Okay, with this so far, I feel like I feel like um other people might have also a very amazing amazing idea. So, let's just leave that open for now and let's talk about strategies we want to use to achieve uh I feel like increasing number of attendees is pretty much works. It's pretty much like proportionate to or corresponded to increasing the number of people with disabilities in the community because if more people are attending we have more people in the community. Oh, >> it's small that >> Sorry. You were saying you were saying something. Oh, no. I was trying to confirm what you said that increasing attendance is synonymous to number of PW members. like the first point and second point are related. >> Okay. Yes. >> Okay. So the next point uh so for making chaos con Europe accessible with um myself pretty much just me because the whole planning stage was happening during the holidays and there was no meeting. So in as much as I was the accessibility lead for the project, I don't know if any other body um any other person volunteered to be part of the organizers, but it would have been great to be working with like accessibility team on it. But let me tell you what we're doing so far. Not like in details organizational um organizer information. I don't know if that's a thing, but like the main thing we're doing is we're trying to see if it's going to be possible for us to get sign language interpreters um available in the event. So we've done pretty much the dig the digital part of the accessibility which is um ensuring >> hold on one language with the sign which um sign language >> English >> it's Europe so they English speaking >> so so Europe so now it's going to be dependent on the language spoken in the region which is what I've been trying to get hold of my bad I actually got the contact, but I've not been able to reach out to the person just yet. But I will since the year has started now because to be fair, the person probably is going to be closed for work too because of the holiday. So, I didn't really reach out. Hold on, let me see. Oh. Yeah. So I got like a contact to reach out to somebody a community that has deaf people are connected to sign language organizations. So I intend to do that this before of course before the event see how that works right but we're working on that. Like I said, we've we've handled the one for the venue. We actually worked hand in hand with people in charge of the venue to make sure that the location was accessible. Um, also worked on that for the digital accessibility, providing accessible slides, giving accessibility pointers to speakers and of course volunteers will be will be briefed as well before the event. So that so we're going to be using of course Chaos Scone Africa was a yacht stick and we're trying to see if what we achieve with Chaos Con Africa we can achieve that with Europe and if that where else we can burden our our wings or whatever to other regions right so that's that because we're no longer like accessibility Africa sorry yeah disability inclusion accessibility Africa but like just accessibility. So, we're touching all regions. So, that's another thing we're achieving. Hope I'm not talking too fast. I am sorry. I am sorry. Hope it's not too fast for you any that for that's that for Chaos Corn Europe. Um there for a more accessible audit of course I intend to ensure that the myself and my my team members of course legal but just to hopefully we get to meet more people who are willing to um do audit. So someone actually reached out to me willing to be audit and amazingly she's a person with disability. Oh that just clicked. So I can this can be an opportunity for her to actually start. Oh see me with bright ideas. So I can just like I didn't remember this on time. She would have joined the meeting. and I'm sure she'll be like um willing to and stoked to join but so we in to increase the number of people actually doing the audit add more people and yeah so that's pretty much it. I guess that's all we have for today and funnily enough we we have actually covered a lot of things even though we were just a few people and I'm happy to be meeting with you guys this year and I hope this year is going to be amazing as amazing as last year even more amazing and we get to achieve a lot of things in the working group this year. >> Yeah. So does anybody have any other additions? So I'm going to obviously leave this open and thank god it's the minute is recorded so people can always go through leave this open for more addition and then we can officially create our strategy document which is going to be a guide for us to actually start work for the year. So any any additions before we come to the end of the meeting today? >> None for me. Okay. Byebye. You blessing is missing call. >> Oh no, she isn't. >> Oh, okay. I guess her internet or something. Okay. Oh, good. So this is where we come to the end of our meeting for today. Looking forward to seeing us in our next meeting. Yeah. Take care. Bye-bye. >> Yeah. Bye-bye., CHAOSS Accessibility/Disability Inclusion WG, January 12, 2026, YouTube, 01kp8jtckk0q4bqv73dneefeax.