The Accessibility DevRoom is new at FOSDEM 2027, and our call for participation is now open.

Accessibility is the practice of removing barriers for people with disabilities. It has the positive effect of improving usability and access for anyone. We believe accessibility is a pre-requisite for software freedom. When we practice accessibility, it leads to enhancing and protecting the four freedoms of free software. Without accessibility, the essential freedoms of free software remain compromised.

This DevRoom focuses on digital accessibility and aims to bring disparate communities together to share what they are building, what has worked, what has failed, and where projects can learn from one another.

Call for Proposals

We welcome both technical and non-technical topics related to digital accessibility in FOSS. We prefer talks grounded in real-world examples, projects, tools, practices, case studies, or lessons learned. Broader discussions are welcome when they give attendees concrete ideas they can take back to their own projects and communities.

Possible topics include:

We actively encourage submissions from contributors to desktop environments, browsers, operating systems, assistive technologies, web frameworks, developer tooling, documentation projects, community teams, and accessibility-focused projects. We welcome different presentation formats preferably, talks, and/or panels (25 mins maximum). Please indicate your preferred format in the proposal details.

Furthermore, everyone is welcome in the Accessibility DevRoom. We especially want to hear from people who are underrepresented in open source and accessibility work, and from people who face accessibility barriers themselves. You don't need to be an experienced speaker or a FOSDEM veteran to submit; we especially welcome first-time speakers. We are committed to fostering a DevRoom which respects and promotes the dignity, rights, and contributions of all individuals, regardless of characteristics including age, body size, disability, ethnicity, gender identity and expression, level of experience, education, socio-economic status, nationality, personal appearance, race, caste, color, religion, and sexual identity and orientation. We pledge to keep this DevRoom a safe space and to uphold the FOSDEM Code of Conduct. We aim for blind review as far as the FOSDEM CFP tools allow. As a first-year DevRoom, we are still working out some of our processes, and we welcome your feedback on how we can make this one more welcoming.

Important dates

Submit your proposal through the FOSDEM Pretalx site: https://pretalx.fosdem.org/fosdem-2027/. If your talk concerns a specific project, please include a link to the project and its open source license, as FOSDEM asks for these where applicable.

Accessibility of the DevRoom

Accessibility is part of how the DevRoom itself runs. We are requesting a physically-accessible room, and we plan to provide live human and automated captioning during sessions. Providing accommodations and accessibility for DevRooms is a new practice for FOSDEM so we ask for your patience — and your help — as we try it out. Making FOSDEM more accessible is a collective, ongoing effort, and the responsibility doesn't rest only on the organizers.

If you have accessibility feedback or suggestions — even if you aren't proposing a talk — we would love to hear from you at accessibility-devroom-manager@fosdem.org. We will address as much as we can.

We look forward to your submissions!

— The FOSDEM 2027 Accessibility DevRoom team (Bee Padalkar, Jona Azizaj, Justin Wheeler, Thibaud Colas, Vijay Mathew)