Building an accessible future: Our highlights from UMBRAAD 2025

Since its inception in 2021, our Umbraco MVP's Rachel Breeze (Development Practice Lead) and Danny Lancaster (Accessibility Practice Lead) have helped to run UMBRAAD. UMBRAAD is a free event, hosted by members of the Umbraco community to mark Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD). It’s a day of virtual sessions, focused on accessibility and inclusion best practices.

This year’s UMBRAAD brought together designers, developers, content creators, and digital leaders for a packed day of talks, workshops, and honest conversations about the state of accessibility on the web. With a programme that blended lived experience with practical advice, the event offered fresh perspectives on what it means to build truly inclusive digital services, and what it takes to get there.

From emergency planning to everyday interactions, neurodiversity to organisational change, Umbraad didn’t shy away from the complexity of accessibility, but it did offer clear, actionable steps that attendees could take back to their teams.

Setting the tone: where we are and where we’re headed

The day opened with a brilliant session from Calum Ryan (GDS) on the State of the Accessible Web. Grounding the day with common accessibility barriers and practical strategies for overcoming them, Calum helped newcomers and experienced practitioners alike to reflect on where their organisations are on their accessibility journey, and where they need to go next.

Designing for disaster

One of the standout talks was titled ‘Mission Critical’ and explored the design challenges of digital services in times of crisis. Drawing on work with New Zealand’s National Emergency Management Agency, this session showed how floods, fires and other high-stress situations shape the way people interact with information. Examples of adaptable content layouts for evacuation messaging were powerful reminders that accessibility is about much more than compliance. It’s about delivering the right information at the right time, in the right way.

Importantly, this talk also shared how accessible content management is critical behind the scenes, especially when those updating content are under pressure. The call to invest in regular training for content teams was a timely reminder that accessibility is everyone’s responsibility, and it needs to be built into day-to-day operations.

Lived experiences, shared insights

A morning fireside chat on ‘Neurodiversity and the Web’ brought together a fantastic panel, sharing powerful insights into how neurodiversity shapes their experiences of the web and the workplace.

There were discussions around common digital barriers such as cognitive overload, repetitive input requests, and deceptive user patterns, and an exploration of practical ways to remove them. But the chat also pushed back against deficit-based narratives, highlighting the creativity, empathy and insight that neurodiverse people bring to digital work. The session ended with simple, yet meaningful advice: work directly with neurodiverse communities, connect with local organisations, and focus on continuous improvement over perfection.

Making practical progress

The day continued with a focus on real-world application through the session ‘Making Accessibility a Team Sport’, a hands-on session packed with ways to embed inclusive thinking across multidisciplinary teams. The later talk ‘Practical Guide to Unlocking Accessibility’, focused on using tools like WAVE to help attendees identify and address common issues on their own sites.

After lunch, our Accessibility Practice Lead Danny Lancaster led a fast-paced, engaging workshop ‘Accessibility Testing: A simple step-by-step approach’. Whether attendees were new to accessibility testing or looking to improve their skills, Danny offered clear, structured guidance, walking us through both automated tools (like ARC Toolkit) and manual techniques (including keyboard testing and screen reader demos). The session helped demystify WCAG and made a strong case for why testing should be baked into everyday workflows.

Advocacy and leadership

‘The Practical Web Accessibility Playbook’ looked at how to build support for accessibility across organisations, especially in leadership conversations. From dealing with the realities of US accessibility lawsuits to tackling the misconception that accessibility is a ‘tick-box exercise’, the argument was clear: meaningful change comes from engaging people emotionally as well as logically. The playbook was both motivating and pragmatic, reminding attendees that advocacy is a skill, and one that can be developed.

Leadership, inclusion, and what comes next

The day closed with another fireside chat, ‘Accessibility from the Top Down’. The discussion highlighted the critical role leaders play in championing accessibility. Whether it’s being honest about design choices that don’t meet the mark or embedding inclusion into organisational strategy, the message was clear: accessibility has to start early, and even then, it’s often not early enough.

Speakers reflected on their hopes for the future, from better internal collaboration to ethical AI use, and shared advice for fellow leaders. Here are a few of our favourite quotes:

• Corey: “Hire for empathy. Hire people who don’t see this as a line item, but as part of the whole.”

• Dennis: “Don’t be intimidated by the volume of work—chip away at it. Start small, connect with people with diverse abilities, and let that connection drive change.”

• Max: “Design for the edges and you get the centre for free.”

• Filip: “This isn’t optional. If you focus on user-centred improvements, the business case follows.”

Final thoughts

UMBRAAD was a day full of reflection, energy and community. What stood out most was a shared understanding that accessibility is not a one-off project or a fixed destination. It’s an ongoing effort, rooted in empathy, driven by collaboration, and powered by people who care.