Schedule

Elizabeth Pyatt has provided accessibility documentation, testing and training since 2002 and has given multiple presentations at CSUN, Accessing Higher Ground and the Internationalization and Unicode Conference. She is the webmaster of the Penn State Accessibility site and has taught multiple courses in linguistics at both Penn State and Harvard. Her experiences making accessible content for language courses includes Arabic, Spanish and phonetics.

• @ejp10inpublic

• @henrihelvetica

Andrew is a Principal Consultant with Intopia and has been working in the field of digital accessibility for over 20 years. During this time, he established the digital access team at Vision Australia, worked on ageing and disability at the W3C in Europe and as the senior accessibility and inclusion expert for the Australian Government, including the Digital Transformation Agency.

Sarah is Director and co-founder of Intopia and can't compete with Andrew's year's of experience (9 years isn't bad though, right?). Sarah co-founded Intopia 3.5 years ago after working with PwC Australia and Media Access Australia as an accessibility specialist. She is also founder of A11y Bytes and A11Y Camp, which have grown to be Australia's largest events on digital accessibility and inclusion.

• @amja
• @sarahtp

I have been building websites professionally since the early 2000s and am passionate about front-end development, accessibility, and promoting diversity in the tech world. Currently, I am working as a Senior Accessibility Consultant at Deque Systems.

When I am not spending time with my family, traveling, gardening, or making a mess with my latest DIY project, I volunteer my time to the accessibility and dev communities. I am the creator of the Accessibility (A11Y) Style Guide and Accessibility (A11Y) Talks virtual meet-up, designer of the A11y Cats T-shirt, member of the A11y Project and 24 Accessibility teams, and past team member and mentor for the OpenAIR Knowbility Challenge.

• @cariefisher

Russ Weakley is an author, speaker, and CSS expert, with a detailed knowledge of web design and development. Russ runs the Web Standards Group and has produced a series of widely acclaimed online tutorials on CSS, Responsive Web Design and web development.

• @russmaxdesign

I am working as a Accessibility Consultant at Deque Systems Inc. I am also a Certified Professional in Web Accessibility (WAS). With real-time industry audits and the body of knowledge acquired through my certification, I would like to spread digital inclusion awareness around the world. I am also a speaker at international conferences like GREAT 2018 at Doha, Qatar.

• @AnooshaA11y

Marco has been in the accessibility field for 25 years. He was influential in shaping earlier versions of the JAWS screen reader, its initial web support and braille output. He now works at Mozilla where he does accessibility testing and evangelism. He is a regular contributor to various open-source accessibility projects.

• @MarcoInEnglish

Bryn Anderson is a visually impaired Accessibility Product Expert helping to deliver accessibility conformance testing solutions through his work at Siteimprove and the W3C Accessibility Conformance Testing (ACT) Rules Community Group

• @brynanders

Eleni Beveratou is a typeface designer from Athens, Greece. With a BA and MA in Communication Design from Vakalo Art & Design College, she focused her studies with an MA in Typeface Design at the University of Reading. There, she developed an interest in researching the science of reading for the partially sighted and her findings have been featured in “Digital Fonts and Reading” by World Scientific.

Eleni joined the Dalton Maag team in 2012 as a Font Developer, and is currently a Creative Director at Dalton Maag.

• @EleniBeveratou

Sam Latif was born in the UK, and is a first generation Scottish Pakistani. She is blind and the passion for what she is doing at P&G has been inspired by the personal access challenges she has experienced as both a consumer and an employee. Sam studied Marketing and Business Law at the University of Stirling in Scotland and began her career at P&G in IT. She has lead IT transformations across multiple worldwide businesses (including Fragrances, Pampers, Olay and Gillette).

In 2015 Sam switched focus from running IT businesses to figuring what it would take to make P&G become the most accessible company for the consumers we are serving and was appointed as the company’s first Special Consultant for Inclusive Design. During this time, Sam worked with the Herbal Essences business to explore how we could make it easier to help people tell the difference between shampoo and conditioner, especially in the shower when people are not wearing their corrective eyewear. It’s estimated that 79% of the population in the west wear corrective eyewear and so its quite hard for people to tell by sight alone our shampoo and conditioner bottles apart.

In February 2019, Sam was promoted to Associate Director and became P&G’s first Company accessibility Leader and is responsible for making P&G workplace, products and packaging and communications fully accessible to everyone.

Sam is married and has 3 kids, boy and girl twins aged 7 and a 10 year old boy. Sam is enjoying the challenge of learning to play the piano and working out at the gym.

• @SamLatif7

Jo is an engineering manager and developer advocate. She is passionate about new web APIs and great CSS. She has worked in various parts of the tech industry from startups, agencies, charities to large organisations. She is also a mentor and organiser at codebar.io where she is able to act on her passion not only for teaching good use of the web but also for improving the diversity and inclusivity of the tech industry.

• @thisisjofrank

Stuart is a consultant CTO, software architect, and developer to startups and small firms on strategy, custom development, and how to best work with the dev team. Code and writings are to be found at kryogenix.org and @sil on Twitter; Stuart himself is mostly to be found playing D&D or looking for the best vodka Collins in town.

• @sil
• kryogenix.org

Eric is a Boston-based designer who helps create straightforward solutions that address a person’s practical, physical, cognitive, and emotional needs using accessible, performant, device-agnostic technology. He's an inclusive design advocate, A11Y Project maintainer, MDN Web Docs contributor, and recovering curmudgeon.

Dr Sarah Lewthwaite is a Research Fellow at the University of Southampton and principle investigator on the UKRI-funded ‘Teaching Accessibility’ project at the Centre for Research in Inclusion. Sarah and her team are researching the pedagogy of digital accessibility in universities and the workplace, to build empirical understanding of how accessibility can be more effectively taught. The 4-year study received over £650,000 from UKRI, and seeks to forge new collaborations and dialogue between academia and industry. Sarah has a PhD in Learning Sciences and research experience across accessibility, HCI and disability studies.

• @slewth

Sven Jenzer is leading web-accessibility at UBS Global Marketing where he is director for UX & Governance. He loves to work on meaningful projects with inspiring, creative people that challenge the status quo. He's driven by user-centered-design and values companies that share the same approach.

Former stations have been international agencies, the Swiss foundation Access-for-All and the research project of the University of Applied Sciences of Central Switzerland for Design for All. He's graduate of the University of Basel and has a Master in Advanced Studies of Human Computer Interaction Design.

• @svenje

Seth Kane, CPWA, CPACC, WAS (he/him)

Seth has more than 20 years of marketing, advertising, software and consulting experience providing subject matter expertise in inclusive design, accessibility, and front end engineering focusing on rich single page applications, responsive website design, mobile applications, e-commerce, and CMS driven technology solutions.

• @onesixtieth

A UCLA engineer with an MBA, Peter Shikli has over 30 years in software development, high-tech business formation, and project management. He is a Certified Manufacturing Engineer, a Registered Professional Engineer, accredited college instructor, guest lecturer, a Trusted Tester certified by the federal Office of Accessible Systems & Technology, and has published over 40 articles & books.

Claudio Luis Vera is a certified accessibility professional with over 20 years' experience in UX design and a background in international development. He currently manages accessibility for Royal Caribbean’s digital guest experiences and is a community organizer in South Florida.

Ioanna Talasli first career was as a successful art glass designer and gallery owner in her native Greece. As she transitioned into her second career – web development – she became interested in accessibility. Ioanna’s initial curiosity blossomed into a full-blown love affair, and she has become a pioneer for accessibility in her country.

• @modulist
• @IoannaTalasli

Marcy Sutton is the Head of Learning at Gatsby, a startup creating fast, accessible websites while building a strong community. Previously, she was a Developer Advocate on the axe-core team at Deque, developing tools for web accessibility testing. She also co-leads the Accessibility Seattle meetup. When away from the keyboard, Marcy can be found hiking with her dog, riding a bicycle, or snowboarding.

Samuel Proulx is the Community Manager at Fable. Sam has been making the web more accessible since he was a teenager, from managing Reddit’s blind community to writing an NVDA plugin. When Sam’s not thinking about tech, you can find him reviewing science fiction e-books!

• @marcysutton

Svetlana Kouznetsova is a user experience and accessibility consultant helping businesses make their products and services user-friendly and accessible to more people. She is also a founder of Audio Accessibility providing consultation on communication access to media and events. Sveta is an author and a speaker. Her TEDx talk uncovers benefits of captioning access that increase audience and ROI for businesses. Sveta’s experience with deafness gives people an exceptional insight into her professional experience and expertise in accessibility.

• @svknyc

John is the Principal Accessibility Strategist at Deque Systems and an internationally recognized Web Accessibility Specialist and advocate for the cause of web standards and universal accessibility. He has provided digital accessibility consultation services to government agencies, educational institutions and private sector companies since 1999.

John is an active and contributing participant in multiple W3C Working Groups and Task Forces, including the Accessibility Guidelines WG (formally the WCAG WG), Accessible Platform Architecture (APA) WG, the Web Platform WG (formally the HTML5 WG), as well as the W3C Television on the Web Interest Group. He is also an active contributor to the Personalization Task Force, the Pronunciation Task Force, and the “Project Silver” Task Force.

• @JohnFoliot

Elizabeth is a senior front-end engineer working on design systems and accessibility advocacy at VitalSource. She likes making websites that don't exclude people.

• @elizschafer

Courtney is a non-binary digital marketer, speaker, and author. Passionate about creating inclusive online spaces, Courtney works with her clients and employer to update digital content and experiences that reinforce heteronormativity and the gender binary. Courtney lives in Dallas, TX with their wife, new baby, and six pets.

• @courtewakefield

Melanie is a decorated, disabled military veteran who works as a Senior Software Engineer at LinkedIn with a focus on accessibility in open source. She is an active member of the Ember.js core team and co-organizer of the Ember Chicago Meetup.

• @melaniersumner
• noti.st/melsumner