Digital Accessibility

Hanna Karppi leads Nexer Digital's accessibility business in Sweden, helping expand the company's accessibility practice while advocating for digital inclusion across clients and industries. Originally from Finland, she studied political history, political science, and communications before building a career in change management and digital workplaces that eventually led her into accessibility. Ha...

Brittany Palmer, co-founder and managing partner of Adaptation Ventures, discusses investing in early-stage companies developing disability, neurodivergent, caregiving, and diagnostic technologies. Born with a bilateral below-elbow limb difference, Brittany shares how her background in environmental law, her experience founding an accessible virtual travel company, and her caregiving journey with...

Mary Roemmele, Senior Director for Product Accessibility at Workday, discusses leading accessibility across a global software organization. Drawing on a background in banking technology and mergers and acquisitions, along with a lifetime of personal connections to disability through her family, she explains how she found her way into accessibility leadership. Mary describes integrating accessibili...

Samantha Karell, who leads Digital Accessibility Services at Allyant, discusses helping organizations build sustainable accessibility programs through audits, VPATs, consulting, and strategic guidance. She traces her path from student services into the University of Washington’s Disability Resources Office, where working with accommodations, Braille materials, and digital access sparked her passio...

Ben Ogilvie, Director of Accessibility Strategy at ArcTouch and First Vice Chair of the GAAD Foundation, shares how a life-changing family events led him into full-time accessibility work. He discusses building accessibility-first digital products, advocating for inclusion with clients, and supporting the accessibility community through GAAD and Accessibility NYC. Ben also explores two future-focu...

Joe Welinske reports from the Microsoft Ability Summit, highlighting emerging accessibility technologies, AI-driven accessibility initiatives, and new approaches to inclusive design. He reflects on presentations covering voice preservation, accessible packaging, neurodiverse hiring, AI training tools, and the expanding role of accessibility across Microsoft’s ecosystem. The episode explores how ac...

Lisa Riemers shares her journey from marketing and communications into accessibility-focused content design. As an independent consultant, she works across organizations to improve how messages are structured, understood, and delivered. She discusses the importance of user testing, plain language, and bridging technical and communication teams. Lisa also explores how accessible communication build...

Stacy Scott shares her journey from discovering screen readers at university to leading accessibility strategy in digital publishing. Drawing on lived experience as a blind professional, she explores how accessible content enables independence, why accessibility must be embedded into everyday systems, and where progress still falls short. Stacy also discusses global initiatives like Bookshare and...

Fabiana Lassandro shares her journey from web design student to accessibility engineer and educator. She discusses how accessibility transformed her perspective on development, the importance of embedding accessibility into design systems, and how teaching helps reinforce that accessibility is foundational—not optional. Fabiana also highlights the value of mentoring, explaining the “why” behind ac...

Mali Fernando shares how accessibility becomes most effective when embedded into product development from the start. Drawing on a background in design and technology, Mali discusses working across teams to integrate inclusive design practices, shift accessibility from compliance to user experience, and help organizations build accessibility into everyday workflows. The conversation highlights the...

Aileen Hackett, Director of Product Management for Accessibility at ServiceNow, shares how her team scales accessibility across a global enterprise. From mandating training for 20,000 employees to embedding accessibility into design systems and product workflows, she explains how organizations move from compliance to usability. Aileen also discusses the importance of listening to people with disab...

Kate Gonzalez, Accessibility Director at Elevance Health, shares her “wavy” career path from occupational therapy to enterprise accessibility leadership. Drawing on experiences across architecture consulting, city government, video games, and healthcare, she discusses how accessibility strategy becomes meaningful when organizations move from planning to action. Kate also highlights the importance...

Marissa Woodbeck, Head of Digital Accessibility at a major financial institution, shares her powerful journey from being labeled a “lazy learner” to leading enterprise accessibility strategy. Drawing from her background in special education, domestic violence advocacy, and banking governance, she explains how accessibility must be embedded into business processes—not treated as an afterthought. Ma...

Darren Rowan, who leads digital accessibility at Eli Lilly & Company, shares how lived experience shaped his path into accessibility leadership. He explains his “engage, equip, embed” framework for scaling accessibility across a global organization and reflects on the importance of speaking up about barriers. Darren also explores how AI and emerging technologies can make accessibility easier t...

Sam Smith, who leads accessibility at Coinbase, shares his journey from front-end engineer to accessibility leader. He discusses scaling accessibility through design systems, transforming accessibility from an afterthought into a strategic advantage, and how rapid product development changes the way accessibility teams operate. Sam also explores the role of AI in development workflows and why pers...

Souvik Sen Sarma shares his journey from front-end developer to Accessibility Advisor at Wells Fargo International. He discusses building accessibility processes from proposal through testing and sign-off, mentoring teams, and managing defect tracking at scale. Souvik reflects on how inclusivity first drew him into accessibility and why human expertise remains essential—even as AI begins to influe...

Stephen Framil, Corporate Global Head of Accessibility at Merck, shares how he embedded accessibility into enterprise digital governance across more than 125 countries. From authoring a global accessibility policy to integrating controls into procurement, SDLC, and clinical trial protocols, Stephen explains how accessibility must be “baked in” rather than bolted on. Drawing from his background as...

Carey Estes, Accessibility Lead at OneMain Financial, shares how he built a scalable accessibility program grounded in action, automation, and advocacy. From a life-changing experience of temporary blindness to leading DevOps integration and enterprise-wide enablement, Carey explains how accessibility becomes sustainable when embedded into systems and culture. His ultimate aim: accessibility so we...

Donna Bungard describes how her lived experience and technical background led her into accessibility leadership. She emphasizes skills-first hiring, the importance of normalizing disability, and centering real human experiences rather than compliance alone. Bungard discusses neurodiversity as a spectrum, the value of customization in both work and digital products, and why accessibility benefits e...

Jennifer Smith, Visa, Director of Strategic Initiatives and Accessibility Jen Smith has worked with accessibility at J.P Morgan Chase, Microsoft, and now at Visa as Director of Strategic Initiatives and Accessibility. She talks about the importance of working with colleagues at different experience levels and backgrounds. She also describes the need in accessibility for better ways to present data...

Joe Devon, GAAD Foundation, AI Futurist Joe Devon has had a long career in both web development and the application of accessibility to the digital world. Joe talks about his earliest days becoming aware of the need for accessibility and building his knowledge. That lead to being a co-founder of Global Accessibility Awareness Day and the GAAD Foundation. Joe describes his interest and excitement a...

Stéphanie Walter, Maltem, UX Research & Design Consultant Stéphanie shares her experience with a motion disability that affects her in her daily life and when interacting with digital games. She talks about upcoming changes to laws in Europe that will require accessibility in public and private web sites.

Lars Holm Sørensen, Monsido, Accessibility Expert Lars Holm Sørensen resides in Copenhagen where is works on imrproving a compliance platform for organizations and municipalities. He also helps to build accessibility awareness. Lars talks about his lived life as a person who is blind using a screen reader. It created challenges in his education and early work as a software developer. Now he looks...

Tolu Adegbite is Product/UX designer. Her current work includes providing guidance about accessibility to designers and developers, educating others, and creating new experiences. Starting her career as a front-end developer she was introduce to accessibility early on. Tolu talks about how she learned accessibility principles and embraces the importance of communication between designers and devel...

Ryan Shugart, Microsoft, Senior Program Manager Rich works as a an accessibility subject matter expert with the cloud and AI teams at Microsoft. He shares his experience being born visually impaired and how that affected his early use of a home computer and technology. Graduating from college in IT, he began his work as a system administrator. As a blind person, he experienced many challenges. Ric...