Event t-shirts were printed with a raised texture so blind participants could get a sense of the graphics. And the featured text was also printed in braille on the upper left hand shoulder - the acceptable contact point when touching a blind person to get their attention or to help guide them.
A team testing their app for their newly created startup company.
All event lanyards featured one textured side that recommend people ask the wearer their name. This gave blind participants equal footing when it came to learning people's names. Seeing people have an unfair advantage of reading someone's name on a lanyard before they start speaking.
Startup team at work.
Vine the guide dog.
Team collaboration
Deaf participant giving her team's final pitch presentation with sign interpreter.
During the event we provided a tactile guide to help blind participants navigate around the event space with the use of their canes.
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As a entrepreneur, you're constantly examining where needs aren't being met. Startup Weekend is a great worldwide entrepreneurship event that helps people in the community grow their business ideas over a condensed 72 hour period. As a former attendee I realized the value of this event and saw the need to ensure everyone from the community had access to its opportunity. I pitched the idea to the parent organization to strengthen the event's accessibility for the disabled community. With their support I lead and co-organized a local event in Portland, OR we called Startup Weekend Access that developed a blueprint on how to better include and enable people from the disabled community. Using the tools we learned from this weekend. We worked to implement them into future events held worldwide.