Our Speakers
Access:Given 2025 will have five speakers (across four slots), sharing their expertise in digital accessibility and inclusion.
Click the names below to find out more about each speaker, or scroll down to read them all.
Keynote Speaker
Ettie Bailey-King(she/her)
About Ettie’s talk:
“Communicating for frazzled brains: how to cut through the overwhelm and communicate in a way that’s clear, simple and (nearly) impossible to misunderstand.”
About Ettie
- Ettie is an inclusive and accessible communication educator.
- She helps people to get clear and confident about using inclusive language, and communicate in a way that’s more accessible to everyone.
- On the inclusive language side, she helps people use specific, accurate and thoughtful language about issues and identities like age, class, gender, disability, sexual orientation and race (plus many more).
- On the accessibility side, she teaches people to communicate in a way that works better for autistic, ADHD, blind, d/Deaf, distracted, dyslexic and tired people (and many others).
- She works with organisations including Amnesty International, Wellcome, Harrods, Decathlon, Vodafone, On, Savills, Global Witness and Girlguiding, helping them to communicate in a way that works better for everybody.
Visit Ettie‘s website to learn more about her, connect with her on LinkedIn, Instagram and BluSky
Craig Abbott (he/him)
About Craig’s talk:
About Craig
Craig is the former Head of Accessibility at the Department for Work and Pensions and the creator of the DWP Accessibility Manual.
He is a design lead and accessibility specialist focusing on user-centred design.
He is autistic and has ADHD. He is passionate about breaking down the stigma of mental health and neurodivergence,
In his talk, Craig will explore the current obsession with AI and whether it’s currently reliable enough to help you solve accessibility problems.
He will discuss research and experiments conducted with various language models. With lots of examples of good, bad, and downright weird outputs, this talk will help you make informed decisions about whether to integrate AI into your own accessibility work.
Visit Craig’s website to learn more about him.
Rachel Edwards (she/her)
About Rachel’s talk:
“Designing for dignity: upholding human rights in design work”
Design shapes people’s lives. From your weekly food shop to registering a death, design can make or break an experience.
But can design help someone attain their human rights?
This talk will challenge you to think beyond accessibility and compliance, exploring how a human rights-based approach puts human dignity first.
We’ll move from designing content that ticks boxes to understanding how accessible information can help people realise their rights. We’ll talk about competing rights, and designing for situations where rights are being compromised.
Human rights are not just for lawyers, international courts, and crisis zones. They’re something we can all consider in our design work.
About Rachel
Rachel is a senior content designer at Content Design London.
Before moving into content design, she worked at the Scottish Parliament supporting the Justice and Equalities and Human Rights Committees where she practiced a human rights based approach to engagement.
As a content designer, she shares how helping people access information enables their human rights. Rachel has also written and spoken about children’s rights to accessible information.
An expert in trauma-informed design, Rachel specialises in using content to help people understand policy, services, and their rights.
Alongside having worked extensively in parliament, government, and for private sector clients, Rachel is the editor of Designed with Care: Creating trauma-informed content and the co-author of Content Design, second edition with Sarah Winters.
Visit Content Design London‘s website to learn more, and find Rachel on LinkedIn.
Helen Dutson (she/her) and Holly Tuke (she/her)
Holly is disability advocate, social media accessibility champion at RNIB and blogger at Life of a Blind Girl.
Helen is a creativity and accessibility advocate, who’s worked on accessible and boundary-pushing campaigns with RNIB, Specsavers, Bodyform and many more.
Pay It Forward Tickets
Because we don’t want to exclude anyone from attending, we’ve also introduced the option for people to buy a Pay it Forward ticket.
What is Pay It Forward?
This is a ticket you buy – and donate – for someone else to use.
Each Pay it Forward ticket will be kept aside and allocated to someone who applies for one. The application form will go live on our website later on.