Resumé

Full experience detail: aihal-accessibility.com/experience

Objective

Accessibility standards leader with 25 years turning fragmented or emerging problems — new technologies, underrepresented user needs, incoherent early-stage specifications — into usable frameworks and guidance.

Summary

• Leader in the field of web accessibility, involved in creating and developing many key resources in use today — including WCAG, WAI-ARIA, and the original Bobby evaluation tool.
• Structural analysis, cross-organization facilitation, and framework design for underspecified problem spaces.
• Translates technical concepts for non-technical audiences, and helps stakeholders with different goals reach consensus.
• Global, multilingual, and multicultural work experience. Languages: English (native), French (intermediate), German (beginner), and ASL (beginner).
• Based in Ottawa, Canada; citizenship and work authorization in both Canada and the US.

Experience

Aihal Accessibility (independent consultant), Ottawa, ON

Accessibility Consultant · July 2023 – present

• Authored explainer articles on the European Accessibility Act and EN 301 549, translating regulatory requirements into practical guidance.
• Co-chair of a Metaverse Standards Forum working group on accessibility in the metaverse, exploring accessibility in virtual and augmented reality.
• Lead the Digital Accessibility Framework, a project hosted by the organization Accessible Community, to expand knowledge of accessibility needs for underrepresented user groups, structured for worldwide review and contribution.

MIT / World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Cambridge, MA

Web Accessibility Specialist → Technical Lead → Accessibility Strategy and Technical Lead · June 2006 – July 2023

• Co-edited WCAG 2.0 and WAI-ARIA 1.0, W3C standards now incorporated into accessibility legislation worldwide and part of the web platform.
• Identified hidden inconsistencies in ARIA drafts, and built process and tooling to surface and resolve them, ensuring the technology remained consistent across a set of related specifications.
• Provided process and technical leadership in a multi-stakeholder negotiation about how the ARIA standard integrates with HTML, and largely wrote that section of the ARIA specification.
• Part of the leadership team of three Working Groups, helping to determine strategy and priorities, ensure W3C process and technology development requirements were met, and managing responses to ongoing public feedback.
• With other leaders, instigated development of the Accessibility User Requirements series, which explain disability community needs for technology developers. This helped groups with no prior accessibility context to understand and accept feature requests.
• Proposed a set of accessibility guidelines for technology developers, eventually named Framework for Accessible Specification of Technologies (FAST) and still under development at W3C. The Digital Accessibility Framework is an extension of these ideas.
• Convened and led task forces and working groups, recruiting leadership, setting direction, and keeping years-long consensus processes productive.
• Identified and developed roughly a dozen participants into working-group chair or task-force lead roles over the course of nearly two decades; most remain in accessibility leadership today.
• Represented the organization worldwide via keynote presentations, academic papers, and industry conferences.

Watchfire, Ottawa, ON

Accessibility Project Manager · August 2002 – June 2006

Led integration of Bobby into Watchfire's WebXM tool, working directly with clients on accessibility best practices and product customization.

CAST, Peabody, MA

Bobby Project Manager / Technical Designer · June 1998 – August 2002

• Managed development of Bobby, the first web accessibility evaluation tool, aligning its tests with the newly-published WCAG 1.0.
• Contributed Bobby's evaluation logic to a cross-organization W3C effort to define common accessibility evaluation techniques, supporting consistency across tools industry-wide.

University of Denver, Denver, CO

Disability Services Technology Specialist · September 1993 – August 1997

Coordinated accessibility accommodations for students and employees, and produced accessible materials with early adoption of the web for this purpose.

Education

Harvard Graduate School of Education — Ed.M., 1998 (Educational administration, community development, and technology) University of Denver — B.A., 1994 (Psychology; minors in Music, History)

Publications

Selected publications and full list: aihal-accessibility.com/publications