Digital Accessibility

Erica Ellis, Uber, Head of Product Equity Design Erica Ellis is Head of Product Equity Design at Uber. She explains how accessibility is integrated into the organization through a mindset about service design. Erica shares her early experience with a deaf family member and being an advocate for gender equity for women in technology. As a designer she became familiar with accessibility and helped t...

Gareth Ford Williams, Accessibility Consultant, Ab11y.com Gareth Ford Williams describes his current work as an accessibility consultant. He shares some childhood experiences that made aware of disabilties at an early age. Gareth provide a great review of the decades of pioneering work that the BBC has done in making their content inclusive.

Sharyn Morrow, iCIMS, Principal Accessibility Engineer Sharyn Morrow began her career with an early interest in communication and working with early PCs and software. That led to to learning about HTML, graphic design, and working for SiteImprove. She shares her personal challenges with her neurodiversity and how she now advocates for herself, her family, and others. Sharyn now provides accessibil...

Mark Steadman, Fidelity Investments, Director, Software Engineering - Mobile Accessibility Mark Steadman is Director of Mobile Accessibility at Fidelity Investments. Mark has made a career of being a developer who helps other developers be successful in supporting accessibility. He talks about what makes an efficient and consistent process for the developer side of things. His work began at State...

Jill Bateman, Ohio University, Digital Accessibility Coordinator Jill Bateman provides comprehensive accessibility support for students and staff at Ohio University. That includes reviewing tools and technology and processes for purchasing. Starting in web design, Jill found similarities between usability and accessibility. She shares the challenge of an elderly family member which helped drive he...

Jonathan Hassell, Hassell Inclusion, Founder & Chief Executive Jonathan Hassell talks about his many years of experience in accessibility. He describes the evolution and challenges at the BBC to make their content available to all across their many services. Jonathan also explains the importance of standards organizations.

Léonie Watson, TetraLogical, Director Léonie Watson's early work as a web designer was interupted when she lost her sight. As she began to use assistive technologies for her own needs, she found her way into accessibility testing. This led to many years of solving accessibility problems for a wide range of organizations. Now, Léonie is the Director of TetraLogical - a consultancy for accessibility...

Jamie Knight, Jamie + Lion (limited), Director Jamie Knight talks about the many activities he was involved with in eleven years working in accessibility at the BBC. Now he provides consulting and workshops. Jamie also shares his own experience as a person with disabilities and the importance of accommodations in life and work.

Dominique Wheeler provides training and support for accessibility implementation within U.S. federal agencies. She started her career work at a Baltimore education non-profit organization. It was while creating training materials for the Department of Defense that she became familiar with Section 508 requirements. That led to her full-time work as an accessibility specialist. She talks about the T...

Derek Featherstone, Saleforce, VP of Accessibility and Inclusive Design Derek Featherstone VP of PAccessibility and Design at Salesforce. Derek describes how accessibility is integrated in the overall structure at Salesforce. He shared his own disability challenges and starting his own consulting firm that was acquired by Level Access.

Amanda Powell, Target, accessibility in user research Amanda Powell works as a senior UX designer at Target. Her exposure to accessibility came from her own challenges of having an autoimmune disorder affecting her sight. She became an advocate for accessibility tools and processes internally at her organization. That expanded to helping research and design address the needs of disabled customers.

Mike Paciello, Pearson, Director of Accessibility Implementation Mike Paciello is one of the pioneers is helping accessibility become an organized discipline for improving products and services. He began his career as a technical writer and that brought him to voluteering with the publishing of braille documents. From there, Mike formed The Paciello Group which brought usability methods into acces...

Michele A. Williams, M.A.W. Consulting, owner Michele talks about her wide variety of experiences in accessibility. Much of her work aligned with user experience activities. This included graduate research and study, working as a researcher, and accessibility consulting. Michele has written many papers and articles and has a patent for a wearable device.

Ross Mullen, CANAXESS, Director Ross Mullen talks about his extensive experience in working with standards organizations for accessibility. He spent many years working with accessibility for government agencies. Now, Ross has his own consulting practice.

Meryl Evans, independent, Professional Speaker and Trainer Meryl Evans is an accessibility evangelist who works as a trainer, speaker, and consultant. Her early career was with business writing and digital marketing. She then became involved with making and instructing how to make high-quality captions for video. Meryl stresses the importance of going beyond digital accessibility and considering t...

Thomas Wlodkowski, Comcast, Vice President, Accessibility Currently, leading the accessibility program at Comcast. Tom's team supports both employee-facing or customer-facing accessibility. He shares his experience being blind from birth and finding his way into the media world through radio at WPOP in Boston. That led to work with audio descriptions, policy-making for accessible media and then a...

Miriam Nabinger, independent, Accessibility Specialist Miriam Nabinger began her work career at IBM where she first became aware of accessibility. She decided to study accessibility and make that the focus of her work. That led to her starting her own accessibility consulting practice. She talks about the current status of accessibility in Austria and the need to create more awareness.

Rajesh Kalidindi, independent, Accessibility & User Experience Consultant Rajesh Kalidindi enables individuals and corporations through his accessibility consultancy by providing training, comprehensive validations, VPATs, usability studies, empathy workshops, etc. He began as a multimedia designer and moved into UX. Joining Microsoft, Rajesh found a passion for inclusive experiences that lead...

Sarah Horton, University of Southampton, Research Fellow Sarah Horton is currently a research fellow at the U. of Southhampton working on a study about the teaching of accessibility. Her career began by working with instructional technology in academic circles and the led to her work in web development. She was part of the staff in the early days of The Paciello Group, contributing to audits, desi...

Cam Beaudoin, CIBC, Senior Manager of Accessibility Cam Beaudoin is the Senior Manager of Accessibility for a financial institution in Canada. He started as a developer at a consulting company and was immediately charged with understanding the WCAG. That led to his current position as well as consulting, speaking engagements, and his own accessibility podcast. Cam describes a bit about regulatory...

Rachael Bradley Montgomery, Library of Congress, Digital Accessibility Specialist Rachael talk about her work as the co-chair of the W3C's Accessibility Guidelines Working Group and her charity work in supporting accessibility for small community organizations. In her work at the Library of Congress, she help create accessible experiences for employees and patrons. She talks about her own challeng...

Ken Nakata, Converge Accessibility, Principal Ken Nakata helps law firms and corporation understand web accessibility issues. His career began in the Department of Justice working on the original Americans with Disability Act legislation and litigation. When Section 508 appeared, Ken started working in that area and spent a long time in that digital accessibility effort.

Marie Van Driessche, Unc, UX Designer Marie Van Driessche helps her organization's clients understand the importance of accessibility in their web sites and apps. She shared her own experience with the many accessibility issues specific to being deaf. 

David Schleppenbach, Tactile Solutions, President David Schleppenbach produces a braille computer for people who need tactile or haptic input. He gives a quick tour of the product and manufacturing facility. As an instructor at Purdue University, he began supporting blind students by creating a better learning environment. This led to participating in the tech entrepreneurship program at Purdue an...

Sambhavi Chandrashekar, D2L, Accessibility Lead Sam is the accessibility lead at an educational technology company called D2L. She began her career as an IT professional. Her post-graduate work focused on online accessibility for people who are blind or vision impaired. She taught a master’s program in Inclusive Design at OCAD University in Toronto. Two of her students started Fable - now a promin...