Diversity and Accessibility

We care deeply about making Domain-Driven Design Europe a safe and welcoming space for everyone.

As with everything, this involves making many trade-offs. We want to get better at prioritising the efforts that have the most impact on safety, comfort, diversity, and accessibility.

Consider this list an invitation to tell us what we're missing. Please send your ideas or concerns to contact@dddeurope.com or call +32 468 109 891. We treat all submissions confidentially.

Things we're doing

Code of Conduct (CoC)

We ask all participants, speakers, and staff, to adhere to our Code of Conduct, and mention it in the opening speech of the conference. Our goal is to create a safe and welcoming environment for all participants. We fully intend to enforce it, and have scenarios in place for dealing with violations.

Contact person

We have a contact person for reporting Code of Conduct violations and related concerns.

Speaker reimbursements

Speakers' expenses are fully reimbursed, so that having limited means is not an objection to speak at the conference.

Language

We encourage participants to speak English, even if you share another language with your conversation partners. This makes it easier for others to join.

Speaker diversity

We put a lot of effort in curating the content of the conference, and do additional research efforts to find relevant speakers from underrepresented groups.

Presentation support

We offer support to speakers who are new to public speaking, or who are developing new content. For example, we sometimes pair up new speakers with experienced speakers to give feedback on the material, or help find opportunities for new speaker to do a tryout at a meetup.

Gender-inclusive language

We attempt to use gender-neutral language in all our communication. Let us know when we make mistakes.

Donate a ticket

You can donate a DDD Foundations to someone who can't afford it. We'll match every donated ticket with an additional one. Simply request or buy the donation ticket here

Volunteers

You can volunteer to help out during the conference, and get to see a number of sessions for free.

Security

We have professional security staff at the venue.

Quiet Room

Attendees can retreat here, and we ask others to respect it.

Wheelchair accessibility

The venue provides this, as it is required by Dutch law. There are wheelchair-accessible bathrooms downstairs. The food buffet tables are not wheelchair accessible. Our staff will assist you. The hotel offers guestrooms for invalid guests. Please contact the hotel to assure you have such a room.

Reserved accessible seating

Contact us for info.

Audio loops

The venue provides a Phonak FM system, which can be used with a headset or with a stand for your own hearing aid. We can provide this upon request.

Bring your assistant

If you need an assistant to help you attend the event, we'll give them a free ticket.

Assistance animals

Animals are not allowed but we make an exception for assistance animals.

Gender-inclusive bathrooms

Gender-inclusive bathrooms are clearly indicated

Sign Language interpreter If you need a sign language interpreter, please send an email to contact@dddeurope.com with information on what sign language you need. We will do our best to find and hire one. If you already know a person that would work for you, let us know their contact information.

Childcare

We will have professional child care providers at the venue. This is a free service, but we charge a small registration fee to avoid false positives. We can refund it after the event upon request. Register in the ticket shop or contact us for info.

Dietary requirements

Water, tea, coffee and snacks are served throughout the day at the conference location. We inquire about dietary requirements during the registration process.

Prayer

The Quiet Room in the venue can be used for prayer or meditation.

Queuing

We understand queuing can be difficult, painful or impossible for some participants. We do not anticipate long queues during the conference, but will make participants aware to let people skip the line if necessary.

People with photosensitive epilepsy/seizures

We will speakers to indicate if their presentation contains strobe effects or flickering.

Things we're not doing (or not doing yet)

Accessibility Fund

We don't have an accessibility fund to cover provisions for people who need them, such as taxi rides, ramps, translators, escort from the station etc... Instead, so far we've evaluated and paid for each request individually. We haven't felt the need to set aside a predetermined budget, but we're interested in learning about pros and cons of such a fund.

Live Captioning

At present we have no plans to have live captioning during the event. Let us know if you're hard of hearing, and we'll find a way to do it.

Training staff

Our own staff is fully aware of our efforts. However, we hire a lot of staff through suppliers (catering, hospitality, security, ...). Unfortunately we can't train them up to our standards of inclusivity.

Speaker quota

Although we aim for an equal representation of women, people of color, and other minorities, a 50% speaker quota is hard to achieve for a niche conference like DDD Europe. We believe that tech conferences should set an example for the industry. So, we don't just rely on our CFP process, but we also actively seek out speakers from underrepresented groups to make DDDEU more diverse and grow towards have equal representation.

Blind CFP selection process

We feel a title and an abstract alone are not sufficient to determine whether the presentation is suitable for the conference. We research candidate speakers by watching videos of their earlier talks, reading their blogs, having a conversation upfront... Therefore blind selection is not possible.