Google DevFest Central Valley: Community First, Buildathon Second.
TL;DR: My second DevFest Central Valley in Modesto was about who AI is for, from the mayor's opening to a keynote on AI as a community institution. In the buildathon I made Onceover, a first-look accessibility checker for small business websites, built in Google AI Studio with Gemini . It tells an owner what it found, where the rule comes from, and what it can't see. Modesto Mayor Sue Zwahlen…
My second DevFest Central Valley in Modesto centered around the significance of AI for the community, from the mayor's opening remarks to a keynote about AI being a community institution. Mayor Sue Zwahlen, addressing developers, students, and curious individuals, emphasized that the community needs them. This set the tone for the event's theme of Build. Scale. Secure., with talks, labs, a scavenger hunt, and a short buildathon.
During the buildathon, I created Onceover, an accessibility checker for small business websites using Google AI Studio and Gemini. It informs business owners of the issues found, the rules behind them, and their limits. The event's focus on accessible technology resonated with me, as I work in the California courts and help clients who often don't understand the technical aspects of technology but need it to function and trust it.
The keynote by Saphonia Foster introduced a framework for leveraging AI for socio-economic justice, comprising three questions: Lens (how we spend time with AI), Voice (how we shape AI and AI policy), and Value (whether AI uplifts our communities and guided by our perspectives). This framework guided my thoughts on how AI impacts small business owners like my wife E, who runs a wholesale bakery and faces challenges in creating an accessible website.
The buildathon's output, Onceover, aimed to address these concerns by providing an accessible first-look web diagnostic tool for small business owners, combining deterministic axe-core scanning with Gemini explanations in plain language, and offering clear guidance on how each issue affects the user.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
