AI assistants are everywhere. Let’s make them accessible with Fanny Demey

We spend more and more time talking to LLMs. A chat isn't just text anymore. Answers show up while they are still being written. They can be long and structured. The agent works through steps you can't see, and sometimes it shows buttons and other components (for example with the A2UI library). Most of what we know about accessibility was made for screens and forms, not for this.

With TalkBack, a streamed answer can turn into a pile of fragments, or into silence. How do you reach the Stop button? How do you get back to the latest message? Who is even talking? And with the European Accessibility Act, accessibility is a legal requirement for many digital services, so this is no longer optional.

Fanny will share practical tips to help you build chatbots and agent features. Whether you're building a chat right now, or you're just curious about what matters when people talk to LLMs, you'll leave with a checklist you can use right away.

Fanny Demey is a freelance mobile developer and accessibility expert who loves improving user experience (UX) through an accessibility lens. When she is not coding, she helps companies meet accessibility standards. Over the past few years, she has worked on an application for people with Alzheimer’s disease, as well as another used mostly by blind and low-vision users. These experiences helped her identify common issues, such as screens overloaded with information or lacking essential context, and inspired her to design more intuitive, inclusive interfaces. In 2023, she published a book on Android accessibility and is now recognized as a Google Developer Expert.

The event will take place at Teaching Room 7 of the Old College Building of the University of Edinburgh.