Dear all,
As many of you may be aware, an all-Asia continental online conference
took place this past weekend on the 9th and 10th of July dedicated to
the free and open source NVDA screen reader. Being an active part in
its planning committee, there are a variety of things I would like to
conclusively share – lessons learnt from past mistakes, overall
reception, vision for the future and a thank you to all those who
helped make this possible, all from a personal perspective.
Inspired from the impact NVDA has had on my life and NVDACon
International 2016’s chair’s encouragement to introduce regional
conferences to our respective geographies, the idea of a South Asian
version came to mind. However, a well-received survey I created to
ascertain interest about the same disproved me – South Asia was
insufficient to cover the countries we were receiving responses from,
and thus came about the expansion to NVDACon Asia, where we now stand.
The process of planning and preparation was difficult, with challenges
throughout, but certain people like Ali Luhar, Shubham Tandon, Andy
Whoo and others persisted with me. During academic commitments and
time constraints, some of us organizers took time to invite speakers,
spread the word, finalize details, take into account feedback and
suggestions and do much more that complied with the magnitude of our
aspiration. RadioUdaan and BlindHelp Project graciously offered their
services, of live streaming and web hosting respectively, which we are
very thankful for. As ideal session presenters, dignified individuals
with experience and expertise in the corresponding areas, including
Ashik Hirani, Ashish Singla, BlindHelp Team, Maheshinder Singh Khosla,
Dinesh Kaushal and Manish Agarwal believed in what we were doing and
gave excellent demonstrations, talks and presentations.
We may have made mistakes, one major one being lack of session
recording backups which the concerned organizer was unable to do due
to unknown reasons and due to technicalities, a backup didn’t work
either. Please send me any positive or negative feedback, reviews or
critique you may have to my e-mail address bhavya.shah125@...
and I shall try my best to incorporate this in any future regional
NVDA conference. Some preset audio editors couldn’t function due to
medical issues, but as a replacement, Ali Luhar, Umar Luhar and
Mohammed Luhar worked in that place instead, which I would like to
sincerely recognize. I remain in debt to Andy Whoo, Brandon Cross and
Hinata Ma’am from North and Latin American geographies for having
provided us with the powerful Teamtalk server where we hosted our
conference. We tended to go a few minutes post-schedule, but
cooperation from RadioUdaan, subsequent session speakers as well as
listeners and attendees kept it going on smoothly. I am immensely
pleased to share that almost 1500 people combining both Radioudaan
listenership, Teamtalk participation and other indirect attendees
tuned in to NVDACon Asia, and the overwhelming amount of
post-conference appreciation the NVDACon Asia Planning Committeee has
been sent is truly heartwarming.
I consider this first attempt at a continental NVDA conference as a
foundationally enlightening and positive step towards what I would
like to see many regional, national and continental conferences going
across the globe around the year. Only a community’s effort can
produce quality, and I hope NVDACon Asia exemplifies that.
Conclusively, I thank each and everyone of you, who played their
non-trivial part they could play, apologize for errors I may have
committed or people whom I missed to include above, express my earnest
gratitude to all our speakers and listeners, and hope that those who
could make it to the conference had something to gain and take away as
lifelong memories from NVDACon Asia!
Best Regards,
Bhavya Shah (Co-Founder, Host, Website Content Writer, Outreach
(Promotion & Speaker Recruitment) and Coordination (with RadioUdaan,
BlindHelp Project, Presenters and Participants) Person, Initial Survey
& Task Force and Discussion E-group Creator & Moderator at NVDACon
Asia)

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Warm Regards
Bhavya Shah
Using NVDA (Non Visual Desktop Access) free and open source screen
reader for Microsoft Windows
To download a copy of the free screen reader NVDA, please visit
http://www.nvaccess.org/
Using Google Talkback on Motorolla G second generation Lollipop 5.0.2
Reach me through the following means:
Mobile: +91 7506221750
E-mail id: bhavya.shah125@...
Skype id : bhavya.09