Dennie is Microsoft MVP Developer Technologies and has experience in accessibility with Microsoft technologies. In daily life Dennie is president and developer at DDSoft, a nonprofit that connects IT to People who are less tech-savvy. Dennie invented technical solutions and systems to help people with disabilities to participate in their daily life. Thanks to his autism he's the right man at the right spot to contribute as a volunteer in function of people with disabilities.
$people, $nondotnet
People on the autism spectrum can experience more difficulties in life. Let’s be honest, most of the people with autism have difficulties in their daily lives, work environments and in tech tasks. One of the well-known difficulties people on the spectrum have is being rigid. Rigidity is having difficulties to change from work methodology, way of thinking (in life and/ or work) and even tools and software systems. I have difficulties with rigidity too. But I am a kind of “Get your hands dirty” person and I try how far I can go with changing, which change causes the biggest stress and why? Can changing from stack trigger anxiety? Can little adjustments help with the change? Can I, or a coworker make the change easier for me? We are not only going to discuss how to cope with rigidity in software, but also going to look at the other side of life. Can the use of modern tech help with ongoing changes in the real world? Can a software or tool make the real world changes more comfortable? Join me on a inspiring road how I help myself and if this can inspire yourself and/ or your co-workers?
$azure, $AI, $dotnet
Co-Pilot, Chat GPT, OpenAI Image generators, what is that buzz all about? Does it really helps people? Is it a new unnecessary buzzword ceased to exist? Or is it the holy grail to be more productive? Well, In this talk I show you how I use it as a person with autism, entrepreneur, developer and of course, in my daily life!
I use Co-Pilot, GPT, GenAI and more to cope the stuff that is necessary but not my biggest talent. Coping is behaving as normal as possible, it's something with bad association in the autism community, but unfortunately most of the people identifying them as autistic know that it's something expected from the outer world. Also governments, customers, co-workers and more expect you to do stuff, to be productive, enjoyable and more.
You can automate your life with AI, you even can have a AI personal assistant, marketer and more for free or just for a penny. You need to implement a new programming methodology? No worries! Co-Pilot will get you started. You are bad at design but need to promote an event? No worries! OpenAI and Microsoft will get your design! You don't know the ideal search term for as specific problem? No worries! Bing Chat will get you there, very fast and easy!
This talk is a follow up of AI for the Better, where I envisioned AI assistance, and you will see, using it on a daily basis makes my life easier! A dream came true!
$people, $nondotnet
Autism, Autism Spectrum is a condition where the brain of a person works different. With different I mean: not worse nor better. Just different connections wired in the brain. Predictions, behavior, communication, social interaction, and more are different.
In this talk I will explain how autism works, what the traits are and how you can coach people with autism in tech. I explain how the different traits can manifest. I will talk about the underlying patterns and layers, and how traits that at first sight are a disadvantage can be an advantage in the right context. I teach you coaching techniques helping you to change the context. If you change the context, you change the outcome.
I will also explain how you can coach yourself if you have autism. This is because coaching can come from external resources, but also from within. If you start to know yourself from the inside, you start seeing patterns what works in which scenario. This is a very powerful tool to be more productive, more happy and more successful in life.
$people, $nondotnet
Anxiety, one of the six main emotions, is a feeling of being afraid and experiencing fear. You can have a periodic time frame or a moment with anxiety, or longer periods of anxiety called chronic anxiety. A short period of anxiety is good for your fight or flight response, so that you can take the right actions in critical moments. Chronic anxiety can lead to an unhealthy state of mental being. People can be anxious for a lot of reasons, and there are even proven phobias on researched fears.
You can be anxious for tech reasons too. Let’s imagine being anxious for Windows updates, anxious for NuGet packages, anxious for rebranding, … In this talk I am going to cover reasons where people can be anxious for related to tech. I also show you insights to reduce the amount of anxiety via either changing your thoughts or having software adjustments like branching, backups, and more...
This talk will give you my insights how I (try to) cope with my own tech fears and learn you to go from FEAR to Face Everything And Rise.
$UX, $UI, $People
As developers, startups and consultants we have the responsibility to make systems and we need to be aware that systems create emotions for their users, customers and even ourselves. In this talk I am going to teach you how to be aware of emotions the systems can trigger. Have you ever worked with an app that recalled you a nice experience in the past? Or worse, did a software system remind you with a bad experience in the past? Pictures are a strong tool in a software system that can trigger a lot of emotions. So in this talk we are definitely going to look into picture and images. If your software system is a to-do app, calendar or meeting system are you aware of popups, reminders, attention and attention loss? Are you aware that attentions and colors can trigger anxiety, stress or worse? And last but not least: Do you add that little extra functionality that creates the WOW moment for your user? Are you creating magic in their life? Today you will learn about triggering emotions with digital systems, and at least you know which emotions you can (unintentionally) trigger.
$UX, $UI, $People
Software in the broadest sense can trigger a feeling of stress or even anxiety for it's users. This can be a problem for those people. Let's make this tangible: Did you ever experience stress by filling in a web-form? Do you struggle if you are running out of time but need to fill in too much details? Are you sometimes frustrated by sentences like "Don't miss", "Do finish", "Don't forget"... that popular apps use? To be honest I do. And I am sure that I'm not the only one! The good thing is that you can design for a safety feeling, the opposite of anxiety.
In this talk you will learn how to design for a safety feeling. You will learn how you can change the grammar, punctuation, fonts, colors and graphics in your application.
You will learn how to build forms that are easy to fill in and how you can use error messages that are helpful and not stressful. You will see how you can adjust the time with possibilities to extend the time.
Of course I will also talk about how most businesses use CTA's, commercials triggering FOMO and notifications that triggers stress and anxiety. I will talk about other ways to achieve the same goals but are less stressful.
$UI, $UX, $Accessibility
Colors are an important way to convey information, but there are a lot of people with color blindness and low vision. What if your only way of conveying information is using color? What about an infographic where the color contrast is too low and the information is not reaching the end user, the customer or co-worker? What about missing the deal of your life due to an inaccessible website? In some cases the error: ‘color not found’ will directly lead to: ‘customer or deal not found’. I guess this is not what we want our products to be! In this talk I teach you about color contrast, color blindness and the use of color in UX. I also tell you about tools that you can use to test color accessibility in a lot of use cases.
$Accessibility, $nonDotNet
We all hear about accessibility, creating software and websites that are accessible for as many people as possible, this includes people with visible and hidden disabilities. How many people in the world have a temporally or permanent disability? Where are they, and why do we need to include them? Is there a benefit for our business too? The answers are: It’s a business-driven benefit to design for people that are colorblind, it’s a business benefit that users can buy stuff and request support tickets, even if they are anxious, have a cognitive difficulty or have a vision loss. Users that want to operate our apps and/ or websites but can’t operate or understand them will be frustrated about our company, software and services. They will feel left behind, and the users will have an unfulfilled need and desire. This is not what developers, creators of a better world want, though? In this talk, I will explain the basics why we need to build accessible apps and websites and teach you how to get started making impact when you come back from this conference!
$Accessibility, $Microsoft
We all heard about the need to build accessible websites that include all people on the planet to achieve more. Including over 1B people with disabilities. We understand why we need to include those people and that this is way more than charity thinking.
Today we learn how to test your web applications with Microsoft Accessibility Insights for Web. We will install the tool in our modern browser and even in our CI/CD pipeline. I show you the ins- and outs- of this tool and teach you how to debug inaccessible parts or your website.
I will refer to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, Microsoft Inclusive Design and provide you a lot of knowledge about how specific disabilities work and how to find the biggest accessibility issues with Microsoft Accessibility Insights for Web.
$Azure, $Accessibility, $AI, $dotNet
Azure Speech is an Artificial Intelligence solution that reads aloud text. This is called Speech Synthesis and is used for various modern services. Did you know that you can use Speech to help people with various disabilities all over the world too? This can be people with learning disabilities but also people with dyslexia, ADHD and autism who can read but where reading asks a lot of brainpower and concentration. This even can be people with only one arm of new parents, they can use speech to have more hands free. Today I teach you where you can use Azure Speech, how to get started with an API without any AI knowledge. I will demo Azure Speech on the Web, in Windows Applications and even in de Command Line/ CLI and many more!
Do you want to be inspired what AI can do for the better (life of people with disabilities)? 1 on 7 billion people on the planet have disability that is visible or invisible. People that may need assistance, and this can be digital assistance!
I presented a lot of ideas under the title "AI For The Better" between 2020 and the end of 2022. I guess you all know what happened in the early 2023's: Large Language Models (LLM) like GPT-3 and GPT-4 were released. This disrupted the world of AI possibilities to build for people with disabilities.
I am going to inspire you with ideas ready awaiting to be build to help people. This is the inspirational if you want to start an AI (side) project that matters! When you see this talk you see what’s missing. This talk will be about AI with and Without LLM technology. I will link the power of Azure Cognitive Services to build solutions for people with extra needs. Some scenario's will link trough LLM technologies, some won't.