Attend Develop: Brighton With Blind Burners

Our friends at Blind Burners are looking for active game devs to act as guides for their blind and low-vision delegates attending Develop: Brighton from the 9th to the 11th July, ideally helping with arrivals on Monday and departures on Friday. No prior experience of guiding is required. They can provide a full 3-day pass for the right person.

This is a very special opportunity to be at the forefront of art AND accessibility. A unique experience is guaranteed.

Key Things You Need To Know 👇

• Ideally looking for folks who can be available for the three core days Tuesday 9th to Thursday 11th. This is because we have three-day passes and most of our participants are coming for three days to make the most of the event, several are self-funding a trip to Scotland.
• Also ideally but not required, we would love some people who can be available Monday evening and Friday morning, to welcome folks at Brighton train station, and give them a warm send-off at the end.
• We aim to facilitate each participant experiencing Develop fully, with the same independence and agency as a sighted game dev. Whether this be navigating to the bathroom, dashing between conference sessions, hearing a precis narration of the visual content of slides on screen, explaining “who is in the room/corridor/bar” for networking purposes, and having fun exploring the serendipitous meetings and fun things that can happen.
• This means that we ask guides to be available from the start of the day to the end of the day, ideally, so that our participants can make the most of the day. In each case, a guide/participant pairing will discuss this in advance, and we will collectively find agreement, and check in throughout the event.
• Safeguarding - if guides stay late and are concerned about safety at night, then we will provide taxis/Ubers for guides and participants to get home to their hotel safely.
• Guides and participants are responsible for their own travel, accommodation and subsistence. We do however have a couple of communal meals which we cover, along with coffees and other refreshments when out as a group. The Develop passes also include lunch.
• No prior experience is needed. We provide guidance on guiding, and can also provide online and in-person training with our friends at the Royal National Institute for the Blind.
• We have weekly team meetings on a Friday where our group gets to know each other in advance and share accessibility needs, as well as discussing career goals and blockers with industry mentors.
• Each guide is paired with one participant. We try to match interests, personalities, and maximise opportunities for mutual support and learning. We arrange for online meetings in advance of Develop, so that guides and participants can discuss the participant’s priorities, and create an enjoyable schedule. 
• Participants express their needs in terms of rest time. In practice, we often find our group exploring the event together, and at times we split off into sub-groups or individuals and pairs. If a guide needs to attend an urgent meeting, or take a break, we work with this and collectively support each other. 
• We aim to have 1-1 coverage of guides to give us flexibility to work with this. Some of our most enjoyable times have been when one guide has found themself guiding three people at once. So far, this works organically well. 
• Our group will include people with varying levels of sight loss, from no usable vision to people with sufficient vision to navigate, but still requiring assistance, e.g. recognising people in the room, and reading slides.
  

Blind Burners are particularly keen to connect with established artists and software engineers, who recognise the value in contributing their experience to this talented group of aspiring game devs in their quest to break down barriers and help our industry to innovate.

We would also dearly love to connect with folks working in talent, HR and recruitment, to begin mentoring our participants. Change will come when blind and low-vision game devs are in leadership roles across game dev, from coding to art to Talent and Community and Business Development.

You can read a little more about last year's delegations here.

Reach out to Chris via chris@blindburners.com for more information.