Open Source Assistive Technology Hackathon

Empowering participants to build skills and make real contributions to the assistive technology!

GitHub is committed to improving the accessibility of open source software and empowering people with disabilities to actively contribute. In partnership with NV Access, the Center for Accessibility and Open Source and the Northwest Center for Assistive Technology Training, we’re hosting an “Open Source Assistive Technology Hackathon” focused on empowering participants to build skills and make real contributions to the assistive technology tools people rely on every day.

New to open source? No problem! We’ll walk through core GitHub contribution workflows (including NVDA and keyboard-only navigation), so you can practice navigating repositories, issues, pull requests, and code reviews with confidence. Whether you’re new to contributing or ready to level up, you’ll leave with practical experience and a clearer path to ongoing open source involvement.

Ready to contribute? Join us to contribute to one of our featured open source AT projects!

Featured projects: 

1. NVDA - you’ll also have a special opportunity to collaborate with members of the NVDA team, who will join remotely to help you get set up, answer questions, and review contributions to NVDA.

We’re seeking additional projects to feature! If you maintain (or contribute to) an AT project and would like your project to be part of the hackathon - whether it needs docs improvements, triage support, testing, or small starter issues - please reach out to Maria Lamardo.

Got a new idea you want to work on? Bring it and work on it with accessibility and technology experts! No need for technical skills!

Event Details:

• Cost: Free!
• Dates: May 21 - 22
• Location: GitHub headquarters in San Francisco (88 Colin P Kelly Jr St, San Francisco, CA 94107)

Who Should Attend

• People with lived experience who want to innovate on assistive technology
• Developers with disabilities
• Developers with a desire to help improve and customize assistive technologies
• Professionals working in the field of special education, rehabilitation engineering, biomedical engineering, and other fields that can benefit from free open source assistive technology
• Open source AT maintainers

We’d love your participation in this event. Sign up for the event using this form.

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