As we have achieved 200 signatures on our petition, I want to reiterate how at every step of the way, our team of advocates have done the labor that Sakura-Con would not. They have no excuses left as to why they have not acted.

Case Studies
At a general meeting in January, someone asked the Board if they would create a role for an Accessibility Coordinator or Manager. Instead of responding with a unanimous YES, the Board asked them to "please send suggestions to the board for review." We believe that is an unnecessary obstacle to place in front of someone who was genuinely asking the question in front of the Board who is empowered to make that decision right then and there.

In an effort to make it as easy as possible for Sakura-Con to implement our demands, we have pre-emptively done the labor of an Accessibility Coordinator by doing outreach, writing case studies, and summarizing our findings as a list of recommended actions which we are now escalating as demands. For privacy reasons, each case study uses an alias.

Alix is someone who has never attended Sakura-Con. Given what they have heard about Sakura-Con’s inaccessibility in past years, they made a decision not to try. That would change if Sakura-Con would provide accessibility information on their website.

Blake has also never attended Sakura-Con. They use mobility aids now, but even prior to that, it was difficult for them to attend all days of a multi-day convention. Single-day badges would be a more flexible option, but Sakura-Con is especially cost-prohibitive since it exclusively sells 3-day memberships. Blake validated their decision not to attend Sakura-Con since they had since identified their disabilities, experienced a difficult time during a different 3-day convention at the same location, and heard about the inaccessibility at Sakura-Con. Asked what Sakura-Con would need to do for them to consider attending, they listed:

1. Offer single-day passes.
2. Publish an official ADA/accessibility page on the website.
3. Station an attendant at each elevator location.
4. Provide general ADA training for staff and volunteers.
5. Design a better arrangement for event, panel, and vendor locations to reduce the need to travel between both buildings as often.

Charlie attended Sakura-Con in 2023, the first year that the event occupied both the Arch and Summit buildings and the last year that they would be a member. They have a less visible disability, yet when they needed to use the elevators, they found that the ones in the Arch building had been blocked off exclusively for wheelchairs. As a result of not being able to take the elevators and with the escalators being down, their sciatic nerve and joint problems caused them a lot of pain. Asked what Sakura-Con would need to do for Charlie to want to attend again, they listed: 

1. Make the main Expo Halls and Artist Alley the most accessible areas. It was hard to walk through the extremely crowded aisles.
2. Have clear signage as to where the Artist Alley and Expo Hall are.
3. Have an ADA system that has multiple entry and exit points instead of funnelling attendees into chokepoints: e. g. Artist Alley and the Expo Hall each had only one entrance and one exit. It would be better to spread out the vendors onto multiple floors so they don’t get overcrowded.
4. “and for god's sake for their contests, HAVE A RAMP”

Nym has attended multiple events at the same convention center but is not returning to Sakura-Con this year since 2024 was the “absolute worst event for ADA that [he] ever attended.” At Registration, he received a bright red sticker with an icon universally recognized for disabilities on the front of his badge. Nym corroborated his experience with others who shared the same story. He added, “Marking a marginalized group with a red symbol that they cannot take off is extremely ableist and offensive.” It is akin to wearing a scarlet letter.

Nym’s legal name, a deadname, was also said out loud at Registration despite requesting that his chosen name be printed on his badge instead. Having asked the booth manager about covering it for safety and privacy, the manager said that any attempt to hide the name would be grounds for having the badge revoked and being kicked out of the convention. Unlike at a tech conference where attendees are trying to network with others to find their next job, community members at Sakura-Con use aliases online and in-person to protect their privacy. Exposing the legal name and having penalties for hiding it is a violation of privacy and in some cases even transphobic.

Nym was unclear on what ADA services were available at Sakura-Con. Nym asked volunteers, but they did not know either because they had not received proper ADA training. The website for the event is also lacking a page on accessibility so it would not have been possible for volunteers to have redirected anyone there for accurate information.

What is disheartening is that Nym has communicated his issues in email after email following the 2024 event but has not received a response. The other case studies as well as comments on social media from the community share the same sentiment that disabled people feel unheard and deprioritized by Sakura-Con. They are asked to send an email for issues that the Board is already aware of. They either force themselves to expose their trauma and disability in the email or they get discouraged and don’t email at all. It feels like an unnecessary hurdle, bureaucracy for the sake of bureaucracy, a pointless exercise to exhaust them.

These case studies represent those who have been disenfranchised by Sakura-Con because of its inaction on accessibility matters. By revoicing their stories, I hope that Sakura-Con will acknowledge how common it is for disabled people to have such painful con experiences that they choose to stay away because of unaddressed issues.

Accessibility Testing
One of the demands in our petition is for Sakura-Con to redesign the signage to have higher contrast and readability.

So in addition to writing case studies, we have also tested Sakura-Con’s app and have submitted bug reports that, if unresolved, would mean that the 2025 app is inaccessible and that the Board of Directors is fully aware.

Below is a list of bugs in their maps that we have categorized as either in the bucket for eventeny to solve or for Sakura-Con to solve. For this petition update, we will only list the bugs caused by Sakura-Con and then in a subsequent update we will describe the bugs caused by eventeny software themselves.

Note: The maps contain both 1) ‘static labels’, which are labels that are text embedded into the image itself, and 2) ‘floating labels’, which are clickable labels programmed into the eventeny app for interactability.

For Sakura-Con

1. The label for ‘Garden Terrace’ for map of Summit - Level 3 has inadequate contrast. It is currently a white label on a light green background. The label would be more visible if it were a darker color for contrast since white and light green are both light colors. 

2. The font style used for the static labels on each room is very narrow with little spacing between each letter. Because it is so skinny, it does not occupy as much surface area to contrast with the background it is on compared to a wider font. 

We recommend that if Sakura-Con could do just one thing, simply replace the font with another one that is more readable.

3. The icon used for the escalators does not communicate enough information for a member to figure out their relative position.

By contrast, the icon used in the map provided by the Seattle Convention Center themselves communicates size, direction (going up or down), and orientation (running north to south or west to east).

In a subsequent petition update, we will follow up on the status of these bugs and list bugs that are in eventeny’s bucket.

Please continue to share our petition with family, friends, colleagues. It is in all of our interests that our local springtime convention is accessible to all.