Resumé

Summary

• Leader in the field of web accessibility, involved in the creation and development of many key resources in use today.
• Diverse strengths from strategy and leadership to administration and tool development.
• Ability to understand technical concepts and communicate them to non-technical people, and help people with different understanding and goals come to consensus.
• Written and published many technical documents, academic papers, and support materials.
• Experienced working in global, multilingual, and multicultural environments.
• Languages: English native, French intermediate, German and American Sign Language beginner.
• Based in Ottawa, Canada, with citizenship and work authorization both in Canada and the United States.

Experience

Accessible Community, Paeonian Springs, VA

Digital Accessibility Framework Lead

August 2023 - present

Accessible Community convenes mainly volunteers to address digital accessibility challenges in a “ground up” manner.

• Led incubation of the Digital Accessibility Framework, a top-down approach to expand knowledge of accessibility needs for user groups that that are under-represented in current guidelines and practice.
• Worked with accessibility experts to document a comprehensive set of human needs and content affordances, that when intersected help to predict accessibility requirements.
• Developed a taxonomy and implemented a graph database to store data in a flexible manner to support growth of the model.
• Structured the project to involve worldwide review and contribution.

Massachussetts Institute of Technology / World Wide Web Consortium, Cambridge, MA

Web Accessibility Specialist / Web Accessibility Technical Lead / Accessibility Strategy and Technical Lead

June 2006 - July 2023

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) develops technical standards for web technology. As part of the Web Accessibility Initiative, I was the organization’s interface for three industry groups working on accessibility guidelines and technologies.

• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
  • Co-editor of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0, a W3C technical standard incorporated into accessibility legislation around the world.
  • As part of the leadership team, helped determine strategy and priorities for the working group, responding to requirements and ongoing feedback to ensure acceptance of the final result.
  • Contributed technical and explanatory content, and reviewed and edited content from others.
  • Worked with stakeholders to develop testable guidelines that can be understood by developers, managers, and policy makers.
  • Led the development of a large set of technology-specific techniques to support developers and demonstrate implementability of the guidelines.
  • Managed processing and responses for public feedback received on review drafts.
  • Developed a process and tool used by the working group to demonstrate implementability of the guidelines.
  • Supported the updates of WCAG 2.1 and 2.2, along with modernization of the document maintenance tool set.
  • Helped conceive and incubate the project that is now W3C Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 3.0, with a new approach recognizing changes in technology in the past decade and aiming to address the needs of more users.
• Accessible Rich Internet Applications
  • Co-editor of Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) 1.0, a W3C technical standard to support assistive technology accessing web content, now a standard feature of web pages.
  • Analyzed early versions of the technology identify and resolve inconsistencies, and participated in technical discussion to support consistency and clarity.
  • Implemented document structure, tools, and procedures to maintain a comprehensive and consistent set of technical information.
  • Contributed much of the background explanatory content oriented at readers with less technical knowledge of accessibility.
  • Managed technical negotiation with the maintainers of HTML to develop a path to maintain ARIA as part of the HTML language.
• Accessible Platform Architectures
  • Managed the process of reviewing new web technologies for accessibility considerations, and of engaging with their maintainers to implement solutions.
  • Helped instigate a series of “Accessibility User Requirements” publications that each detail accessibility considerations for various technologies.
  • Interface with groups working on a wide set of web technologies, to identify accessibility requirements in new technologies and develop solutions.
  • Provided strategic leadership identifying the impacts of technology changes and emerging user needs.
  • Helped contribute accessibility features or guidance to many web technologies through systematic review and comment on specifications, and direct engagement with groups developing them.
• Other responsibilities
  • Maintain a neutral perspective and work with leadership to keep work on track.
  • Represented the organization worldwide via keynote presentations, academic papers, and industry conferences.
  • Engaged with representatives of diverse user groups, finding ways to authentically understand perspectives, advocate with less-heard voices, and contribute to mutual understanding in group discussions.
  • Mentored new colleagues to help them understand the diverse aspects of their roles.
  • Identified emerging leaders and provided opportunities for them to develop their leadership over time.
  • Convened task forces to focus on specific topics, including finding leadership, recruiting participants, setting direction, providing administrative support.
  • Develop and maintain team productivity tools using a range of technologies.

Watchfire, Ottawa, ON.

Accessibility Project Manager

August 2002 - June 2006

I joined Watchfire to support the integration of the accessibility evaluation tool bought from CAST into their general-purpose web QA tool called WebXM.

• Worked with developers and designers to port code and incorporate features into WebXM.
• Provided technical expertise in sales and customer service meetings.
• Worked with customers to understand their business needs, support deployment of the product, provide best practices training, and design and implement customizations as needed.
• Worked with the emerging accessibility evaluation industry to improve accuracy and automation of testing, and in early approaches to tool-assisted human evaluation.

CAST, Peabody, MA.

Bobby Project Manager / Technical Designer

June 1998 - August 2002

Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST) developed Universal Design for Learning, now a widely used approach in education. As a spin-off project they developed the first web accessibility evaluation tool called Bobby, of which I became manager.

• Bobby project manager
  • Managed continued development of Bobby, the first Web accessibility evaluation tool.
  • Collaborated with developers of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 to ensure Bobby’s tests harmonized with the WCAG 1.0 guidance.
  • Led industry in developing and documenting accurate approaches to automated accessibility automation.
• UDL support
  • Supported the organization to create an early digital book format that allows publishers to implement UDL principles in content, which influenced the features of EPUB.
  • Developed ways to apply Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles and early accessibility guidelines to the emerging web.
  • Consulted with school districts on integration of UDL practice into their curricula.

University of Denver, Denver, CO.

Disability Services Technology Specialist

September 1993 - August 1997

I worked in the student disability services office, and in the human resources office supporting equal employment opportunity / affirmative action policy compliance.

• Disabled Persons’ Resources
  • Coordinated accessibility accommodations for students and employees with disabilities.
  • Managed data from a campus accessibility survey to help prioritize building improvements.
  • Provided technical expertise for the library of assistive technologies, and instructed students in their use.
  • Produced accessible formats of materials for students, with early adoption of the emerging Web for this purpose.
• EEOAA / Human Resources
  • Collected statistics about university hiring demographics and prepared formal compliance reports comparing the results to population statistics.
  • Supported the Affirmative Action officer in addressing discrimination complaints.

Education

Harvard Graduate School of Education, Cambridge, MA

Master of Education (Ed.M.)

June 1998

Emphasis on administration, community development, and technology in education.

University of Denver, Denver, CO

Bachelor of Arts (B.A.)

June 1994

Major in Psychology, minors in Music and History.

Languages

• English - Primary fluency
• French - Professional working proficiency
• German - Elementary proficiency
• American Sign Language (ASL) - Elementary proficiency

Selected publications

• “Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Web Accessibility: Is Conformance Evaluation a Way Forward?”, in W4A '18: Proceedings of the 15th International Web for All Conference, April 2018
• “Web Standards to Enable an Accessible and Inclusive Internet of Things (IoT)”, in W4A '17: Proceedings of the 14th International Web for All Conference, April 2017
• “Web accessibility guidelines for the 2020s”, in W4A '16: Proceedings of the 13th International Web for All Conference, April 2016
• “Accessibility of emerging rich web technologies: web 2.0 and the semantic web”, in W4A '07: Proceedings of the 2007 international cross-disciplinary conference on Web accessibility (W4A), May 2007
• “Case study: localization of an accessibility evaluation”, in CHI EA '01: CHI '01 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, March 2001
• “Automated evaluation of accessibility guidelines”, in HCI 2001: 150-154
• “Accessibility Issues for Universal Design”, in CADUI 1999: 33-42