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, design reviews, and usability studies. Along the way she has written many books.

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 compliance in Canada. He also talks about the importance of melding our work with business goals,...

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 challenge with having a chemical sensitivity disability.

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 and the start of his accessibility company.  

Sam Chandreshekar, 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 prominent platform to connect to people with disabilities for user research and accessibility testing.

Ian Kersey, Thomson Reuters, Senior Accessibility Specialist Ian Kersey supports the designers in customer-facing products at Thomson Reuters. That includes adding annotations to Figma prototypes and making sure developers have everything they need. Starting in an accessibility office at a community college, Ian continued his career with accessibility consulting, including working at Level Access.

Lorelei Root, Eagle's Flight, Digital Accessibility Specialist Lorelei Root digital accessibility focus with a focus on video games. She shares her experience of becoming disabled due to multiple sclerosis. Having to learn to speak, read and write again, she used the few accessible video games to help provide the road back. This led her to her work consulting about and evangelizing the need for accessibility in video games.

Rich Schwerdtfeger, Retired, IBM, Former Chief Technology Officer for Accessibility Rich began his work in accessibility with the early development of a screen reader for Windows. He was a key member of the world-wide team that brought technologies like ARIA into mainstream use for accessibility. Rich chaired the board of Knowbility and currently is President and Creator at A Diver's Life YouTube Channel.

Charlie Turrell, BBC, Change Manager - Accessibility Champions Network Charlie onboards product development staff about accessibility and evangelizes it throughout the BBC. Starting as a personal assistant in many sections of the BBC, she found her way into user experience and then to guiding the internal accessibility champions network.

Sam Ogami, HP, Accessibility Program Manager Sam shares his early personal experience having a learning disability that was helped with assistive technology. That coupled with his interest in technology sparked his lifelong work with accessibility. This included assisting university students with assistive technology and with accessible procurement of products for the institutions. Now at HP as an Accessibility Program Manager, Sam describes how HP supports accessibility across a wide variety...

Betty Troy, Yahoo, Accessibility Specialist Betty Troy started her career through engineering with an emphasis on biomedical programs. That led to specializing in rehabilitation engineering and a position designing physical assistive technology devices for the U.S. Dept. of Veterans Affairs. She further developed her skills as an accessibility auditor at Applause. Now she is an accessibility specialist Yahoo with a focus on user studies.

Jennison Asuncion, LinkedIn, Head, Accessibility Engineering Evangelism Jennison talks about his lived life being blind and growing up with an interest in computer technology. He describes his challenges in getting employment early on until he found a place at Royal Bank of Canada working with UX and web development and accessibility. That led to his current position as Head of Accessibility Engineering Evangelism at LinkedIn.

Mary Jo Mueller, IBM, Worldwide Accessibility Standards Program Manager Mary Jo talks about her long career with accessibility at IBM. She talks about the challenges in supporting digital accessibility in a large, global organization.

Richard Morton, Head of Accessibility for Government, Central Digital and Data Office Richard talks about his early work with usability testing that also exposed him to the opportunities working with accessibility. He describes the community and knowledge-sharing in the UK. Now he works for the UK Digital and Data Office where the team support accessibility in government organizations.

Julie Romanowski, State Farm, Senior Digital Accessibility Specialist Starting out as a web developer, Julie is now supports a wide range of accessibility activities with State Farm. She takes about the efforts to help executive leadership understand the need for a digital accessibility team. Her team provides training and individual teams work on accessibility for their own roles. That include a focus on communication documents and video media.

Jeremy Katherman, USAA, Lead Accessibility Advisor Jeremy talks about his early work with accessibility through tech support at his university. After that he has enjoyed a lengthy career at USAA where he helped build an accessibility team that supports activities throughout the organization.

Lainey Feingold, Author, Negotiator, Lawyer, Speaker at Law Office of Lainey Feingold Lainey describes her career as a legal advocate for people with disabilities. She talks about her process of structured negotiation to foster change without litigation.

Christopher Land, Oracle, Senior Accessibility Technical Program Manager Chris started out in web development and was first exposed to accessibility working for the University of Michigan. That led to accessibility consulting work at Deque and Level Access where he learned from a great team of experts and did a lot of training. Now he is Senior Accessibility Technical Program Manager at Oracle.

Poornima Subramanian, Princess Cruises, Sr. Digital Accessibility SME Poornima talks about learning on the job about disabilities and getting started as a tester with assistive technologies. She moved into the role of subject matter expert and assisted developers to understand what was relevant to their role. Her work at Holland America merges digital accessibility with a user experience that takes place in the physical world of a cruise.

Glen Walker, TIAA, Principal Accessibility Architect Glen talks about his early years as a software engineer and his personal interest in keyboard support. This lead him to accessibility work that included solving screen reader issues and compliance with Section 508 and WCAG. In his consulting work he continues to help other developers by sharing knowledge in a variety of ways.

Joanne Lastort, Booz Allen Hamilton, Digital Accessibility Specialist Joanne talks about her first career as a professional pastry chef. The loss of use one of her hands moved her to working in IT. Her desire to still be a keyboard user brought her into accessibility testing at the IRS and the FCC. Now she is part of the Section 508 team at Booz Allen Hamilton at the Department of Labor.

Zack Klein, iSoftStone, Software Test Engineer II Zack talks about his work as an accessibility tester and his unique perspective as a person who is totally blind. His love of technology helps him solve issues with the accessible content he relies on. He describes the tools he prefers including his Mac, iPhone and refreshable braille display.

Jen Devins, Google, Head Accessibility UX Jen talks about her journey into user experience and design and then an opportunity to work with accessibility. She considered accessibility from a UX perspective as a champion of the user. Jen describes how research helped to develop training to create more awareness about the need for accessibility.