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. Mentioned in this episode: Info about Accessibility at Blink

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 about the application of AI to accessibility and how it might transform how assistive devices...

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. Mentioned in this episode: Info about Accessibility at Blink

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 forward to greater attention to accessibility in the digital world. Mentioned in this...

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 developers. She also describes her interest in VR/AR opportunities and the need to consider the...

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. Rich talks about some of what is involved in the process of reviewing products for 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 to build a team to support the development. She talks about the important of top down support...

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. Mentioned in this episode: Info about Accessibility at Blink

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 accessibility documentation, training, best practices and tools to help internal staff create more...

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 Farm supporting the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA). That led to...

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 her work and interest. Mentioned in this episode: Info about Accessibility at Blink

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 Trusted Tester program that is open to anyone for certification.

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 accessibility design. Mike continues his work with braille standards, the IAAP, and immersive...

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 the touchpoints with the physical world. That includes offering multiple formats for interacting...

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 position at AOL as director of accessibility.

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 to learning about standards and observing users' challenges in usability studies. He enjoys...