2025-10-09 –, Track One
Put your accessibility instincts to the test! A quiz show on how semantic HTML and ARIA really sound in screen readers, featuring code, surprises, and common myths busted.
Screen readers don’t care how pretty your markup looks, they care about how readable it is. In this interactive talk, we invite attendees to step into the world of assistive tech and guess what common (and uncommon) HTML and ARIA patterns actually sound like when read aloud by screen readers.
We’ll kick off with a short intro to how screen readers interpret the accessibility tree, then dive straight into the fun: A live quiz with real code snippets and audio recordings. Participants will hear screen reader output and try to guess the markup behind it. Was it a native HTML element, or a custom ARIA solution? Did it help or hinder understanding?
Along the way, we’ll highlight lesser-known ARIA attributes. Can you catch them all?
Attendees will learn:
How different HTML and ARIA patterns are announced in screen readers
When to rely on native semantics vs. adding ARIA
Common accessibility myths and mistakes (and how to fix them)
How to think more inclusively when writing markup
Ideal for developers, testers, and accessibility advocates, this session makes learning about accessibility practical, memorable, and surprisingly fun.
Laura Wissiak is an accessibility specialist and UX researcher at Hope Tech Plus GmbH, a social impact startup building inclusive navigation tools for people with visual disabilities. With a background in inclusive design and digital accessibility, Laura combines deep technical insight with a passion for practical, user-centered solutions.
She is a regular speaker at conferences in and outside the accessibility industry, known for making complex topics engaging and approachable - often with one or more Pokémon hidden in the presentation. Her work focuses on bridging the gaps between design, development, and real-world assistive tech use.
When she’s not testing websites or myth-busting, Laura advocates for equity in tech education together with GDG and Women Techmakers Vienna, and authors the accessibility newsletter A11y News and its accompanying podcast A11y Yap.
Accessibility and experience expert at the viennese IT development and accessibility consulting company WIENFLUSS and a native to the use of screenreaders, Pawel has been advocating for better accessibility on the web since his teenage years. His professional involvement in this field has crossed through organizations such as the European Parliament, European Commission and the European Blind Union as well as numerous NGOs and associations in Poland and Austria.
Although his personal field of interest are mobile apps, Pawel is no stranger to evaluating the accessibility of classical web content and he enjoys exploring the faraway corners of HTML and ARIA especially in the companion of many robotic sounding text-to-speech voices.
Aside from his main involvement as digital accessibility consultant, Pawel shares his knowledge about blindness-related technology through various podcast and radio show projects in both Polish and English and contributes to the promotion of IT skills among blind ICT users internationally.