October 18-21 online and in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania! Naming things is hard: Why words become technical debt, a design+dev alignment guide Mike Tullo, Yale UniversityJim Vomero, Four Kitchens Accessible wayfinding: It’s not uncharted territory Aaron Knight, SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry From SEO to AEO: 10 practical ways higher ed websites can show up […]

Tuesday, October 20, 2026, 4:00pm – 4:45pm EDT Slides: TBD Description Consent isn’t just important, it is increasingly becoming the law. With regulations like GDPR, CCPA and VCDPA on the rise, your institution may soon need its own cookie consent solution. The problem? Most consent banners feel invasive, clunky and half-baked to users. There has […]

Red Stapler | UAD: UX research and testing on that ever-minimal EDU budget Melanie Lindahl — The University of Texas at Austin With minimal school budgets, we rarely have money to spend on necessary UX approaches. We know user research and feedback is essential for successful products, but how do we get started? Notes:

Ma’am, miss, bruh. Handling effective and inclusive communication across the generations There are four different and distinct generations in the workforce right now. Some of the boomers are working on their retirement exit strategy while team Gen Z are starting the careers. Navigating between different slang definitions of a word plus keeping everything can be […]

The fourth decade of website deployments Steve Persch — Pantheon In the 2020s, the fourth decade of website deployments, teams are recombining, repeating and re-imagining the patterns of the previous three decades. Notes:

What would Scooby do? Uncovering the real mysteries about your audiences to improve experience… and it starts with you. Some of us go to great lengths to understand and truly get to know our audiences. Through community management and regular engagement, to audience research and user testing. There are many ways that we can — […]

Digital governance in the era of AI: All noise, very little signal Shelley Keith-Panulla — Cornell SC Johnson College of BusinessTim Senft — Cornell College of Agriculture and Life Sciences How do you successfully manage large web properties with a lot of stakeholders? How do you ensure current, accurate information in the authoritative, conversational generative […]

Introduction to GitHub Actions: Understanding key terms and building your first GitHub Action Paul Gilzow — Platform.sh We all know we should be doing more automation of our software development lifecycle, but getting started can be challenging. Even if you have experience in continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) automation, learning a specific platform’s terminology […]

BREAKING: University news site redesign puts accessibility above the fold! Janell Sims — Harvard UniversityAaron Baker — Harvard University Our university news site was recently relaunched with a new and improved look and feel, and an enhanced accessibility experience. In this session, you’ll hear how we embedded accessibility into each phase of the project including […]

From interest to enrollment: The future of program exploration and student engagement Bailey Boese — GMBKacie Eurek — Hardin-Simmons University In today’s digital age, the process of selecting a university program should be as intuitive and engaging as shopping online. Unfortunately, many prospective students are not well equipped to make this decision, and often resort […]