CES 2024 Retrospective

General Thoughts

If I had to sum up my #CES2024 experience I’d say I barely saw anything and also didn’t stop moving from sunrise to well after sunset. It’s tough to describe the scale of CES to someone who hasn’t been there but trust me on this…it’s massive. This makes it feel almost impossible to see every single thing on the expo floor(s) AND catch the sessions/keynotes AND the various other competitions and conversations and meetups and the list goes on and on. 

But I also think that’s what makes CES great. There's so much to choose from based on whatever your interests are. For example look at the sheer number of videos on demand from this year alone you can watch!

Suffice it to say I had a busy week and I’ve been trying to figure out how to properly share what I experienced. At first I thought you might want a play-by-play of each day but that just felt…tedious. Then I thought I’d try and be clever by relating experiences to food because those who know me understand it’s really the only thing in life that motivates me to do anything. It’s probably why I love Lainey Feingold’s accessibility cookie metaphor so much. But alas, that path just made me hungry while I was writing.

So instead I’ve landed on a few overarching categories to bring it all together: floor highlights, activity highlights, and people highlights. So many folks have already posted about their experiences at CES under any number of other themes (including accessibility!), so I encourage you to do a search for your interest area keywords and I’m sure you’ll find excellent write ups. After all, there were 135,000+ attendees and 4300+ exhibitors so you KNOW there’s something for everyone. 

Ok now for my highlights!

Floor Highlights

I had the immense honor of being one of this year’s Accessibility Leaders hosted by the Consumer Technology Association . Part of that experience included VIP tours of a few of the booths. This year we toured Garmin , LG Electronics , and Samsung Electronics and were able to hear directly from their teams about how they’ve been implementing accessibility into their products and the ways they are considering the disability community in the design. 

This was the third time I attended CES and I was pleasantly surprised to see the number of booths that had accessibility and disability interwoven in what they were doing. Some of these were specifically focused on the disability community (e.g. Cephable , Lili for Life , Whispp , etc.), but many were not. I think it’s a sign that CES attendees and exhibitors alike are paying attention to what so many of us have been calling for and demanding to see. For more details about where accessibility was seen and heard, I recommend you check out the pieces that Fred Moltz (Verizon) and Steve Ewell (CTA Foundation) wrote about the show. 

Finally, I would be remiss not to mention all the great universities and students who were in Eureka Park! Many of you know how much I love talking to students and I had the pleasure of spending a bit of time with students from Case Western Reserve University , Clemson University , Purdue University , and (of course) Michigan State University . All of them were so passionate about the work and research they were doing. In a couple cases the student's product was not designed to be an exclusive Assistive or Adaptive Technology, but with a bit of tweaking and input from the disability community it could be. I was able to share about how those students could consider including people with disabilities in their continued development and all of them were excited by the idea. The work of Teach Access never stops!

Activity Highlights

My week got off to a great start with the Accessibility Roundtable and networking reception hosted by the Consumer Technology Association Foundation . During the roundtable a sizable group of industry and advocates got together to chat about implications of AI for accessibility and accommodation considerations for hybrid work environments. After the roundtable more people joined for the networking reception and the excitement in the room was palpable. 

The next morning I attended the opening keynote with Gary Shapiro and others from the CTA team. I was pleased to hear him mention accessibility in his opening remarks and even more excited for the opening keynote from L'Oréal . They spent several minutes talking about their adaptive beauty product, HAPTA, and their commitment to continuing this work. They shared video clips of disabled beauty influencers using the products and it was really great to know the (hundreds? thousands?) of people in attendance were hearing that message. My only point of feedback is that I wish they had used captions for the entire keynote. It was wonderful to have them during the accessibility portion of their presentation, but imagine how much more accessible it could have been to see them the entire time!

Anyway, not to play favorites but I do think the Future of Inclusive Design panel was a highlight of my week! I was honored to share the stage with Kelsey Ruger (Hello Alice), Fred Moltz (Verizon) and Kevin Webb (Mitsubishi Electric US). We chatted about the various ways our organizations consider disability and accessibility in the design process and beyond. I was also really happy to stay in that room the rest of the afternoon for the full accessibility track. I especially enjoyed the Embracing Neurodivergent Employees in the Tech Industry session. I’m still thinking about the "three As" that Natalia Lyckowski shared when she thinks about getting people to care about disability: Awareness, Acceptance, and Advancement.

I also need to do a quick mention of two other interviews I did while there. I sat down with Working Nation to chat about the work Teach Access does and also shared some air time with Fred Moltz (Verizon) and we spoke with Access Tech about CES. 

People Highlights

By far my favorite part of CES is the people. There are people coming from all over the world representing all types of organizations. 

Our Samsung VIP tour happened to coincide with Martha Stewart! She was there doing a demo of some of their products. I was certain that would be the person I was most excited to have shared space with but no, as it turned out at the Leaders In Technology dinner had someone even more exciting in attendance. It was none other than Michigan Lt. Governor Garlin Gilchrist II ! I was able to chat with him for a few brief minutes after the dinner and shared about the work Teach Access does. I already knew he was pretty great but turns out he also knows about accessibility! He learned about it during his time at Microsoft and said it’s still something he thinks about. How about that!

But really the most special thing is meeting new friends and connecting with old friends. I will definitely miss a few but some of the people I was so glad to see in person were: Darryl Adams , Natalie Anderson, MSL, MBA , Matt Ater , Victor Calise, PLY , Joe Devon , Stephen Ewell , Dustin Giannelli🦻🏼 , Lise Hamlin , Kurt Iobst , Kamilah Martin-Proctor , Fred Moltz , Spencer Montan , Ben Ogilvie , Michael Weiss , Thomas Wlodkowski , and Kat Zigmont .

In Closing

Whew! If you’re still with me I commend you! If you’re feeling fatigued just by reading all of this perhaps I’ve done a sufficient job of conveying just how packed CES really is. It’s an incredible event and I’m so grateful to the Consumer Technology Association for bringing me out this year as an accessibility leader. I’m also thankful for the CTA Foundation team and the incredible work they do to make it a great experience for me, the rest of the accessibility leaders, and all the show attendees.

A friend asked me if I thought CES is the new spot for accessibility. Conveniently, Molly Lazarus (Levitt) asked the same question. Check out her thoughts on the matter in her piece: Is CES A New Disability Hub?. 

But if I had to answer I’d say it feels like it’s trending that way. With a sizable global audience it means more awareness of accessibility leading to (hopefully) more accessible design across consumer tech products. There’s definitely more work to be done before I would call it the definitive best accessibility and AT show, but that work hasn’t stopped us before. Let’s get in there and make tech accessible!

Oh, and remember to pack comfortable shoes.