Speakers
Cherry Thompson
Cherry Thompson is a games accessibility specialist/developer with a keen focus in systems design and user experience. They’ve worked on projects of various sizes from small indies like Gambrinous (Cardpocalypse), GlitchMN (HyperDot) to AAA such as Guerrilla Games (Horizon Zero Dawn), Media Molecule (Dreams), Crystal Dynamics (Marvel’s Avengers), Ubisoft and more.
Cherry is also autistic, so to their complete surprise, they’ve been a successful public speaker at conferences like GDC, Full Indie, PAX, and internal to many studios. This was all thanks to a gentle push from their favourite Games Accessibility Conf. They have a passion for making both games and the industry inclusive of everyone. Their hobbies consist of cake eating, bird watching and adventuring with their one eyed cat, Odin.
Derek Featherstone
Derek Featherstone is an internationally known speaker, practitioner, and authority on accessibility and inclusive design. He has been working on the web since 1999, when he left his career as a high school teacher to start his own web design company.
Derek is the Chief eXperience Officer at Level Access – focused on ensuring that accessibility and inclusion are an integral part of creating outstanding customer experiences. He teaches teams accessibility concepts and skills, and leads hands-on workshops with teams of all sizes. Working with Derek will help you analyze and improve your process, and incorporate accessibility and inclusive design processes into your UX and service design practice, and development methodologies.
Marcy Sutton
Marcy Sutton is the Head of Learning at Gatsby, a startup creating fast, accessible websites and web-apps while building a strong community. Previously, she was a Developer Advocate and Senior Frontend Engineer on the axe-core team at Deque Systems, developing tools for web accessibility testing. In 2016, O’Reilly gave Marcy a Web Platform Award for her work in accessibility. She co-leads the Accessibility Seattle meetup and recently founded a group called NW Tech Women. When away from the keyboard, Marcy can be found hiking with her dog, riding a bicycle, or snowboarding.
Scott O'Hara
Scott joined The Paciello Group in 2017, bringing with him nearly two decades of experience working as a designer and front-developer for product companies, and UX consulting and design agencies. When not working, he can often be found testing and writing about the support for various markup patterns and ARIA attributes. Scott needs a hobby.
Tatiana Mac
Tatiana Mac is an independent American designer who works directly with organisations to build clear and coherent products and design systems.
Jamie Knight
Jamie and Lion are an autistic duo who live in Romford. They are not very good at writing third party bios and are a bit shy. If asked they would tell you about their work. Almost 10 years at the BBC working on everything from iPlayer Radio to children’s gaming.
Natalie Patrice Tucker
Natalie Patrice Tucker has nearly two decades of experience building the accessible web. Committed to a web that works for everyone, she spends her days (and far too many nights and weekends) serving as a subject matter expert in the area of web accessibility and training an army of developers and stakeholders to carry the charge.
Eric Wright
Eric is a Sr. Lead Technologist at Booz Allen Hamilton, with over ten years' experience training developers, designers and project managers throughout the United States federal government to buy, build, manage and maintain accessible technology. He is a co-founder of the Northeast Disabled Athletic Association, a Vermont-based nonprofit that provides opportunities and equipment to athletes with physical disabilities to play recreational and competitive sports.
Devon Persing
Devon Persing is an accessibility specialist at Shopify, and has been working in digital accessibility since 2012. Her current focus is on documentation and support for Shopify’s design system, Polaris, as well as remote and in-person education for people in development, design, content, and related roles. Prior to joining Shopify in 2018, she was a member of the team at Simply Accessible.
Henri Helvetica
Henri is a freelance developer who has turned his interests to a passionate mix of site performance engineering and pinches of user experience. When not reading the deluge of daily research docs and case studies, or indiscriminately auditing sites in devtools, Henri can be found contributing back to the community: Toronto Web Performance Group meetup + SPOTLIGHT: PERFORMANCE conference co-organizer, curating performance content for conferences or volunteering his time for lunch and learns at various bootcamps. Additionally, you can find him speaking at conferences, and touching base w/ the community - all with a radiant smile. Otherwise, he’s focusing on running the fastest 5k possible (surprise surprise).
Chancey Fleet
Chancey Fleet is a Brooklyn-based accessibility advocate. Fleet coordinates technology education programs at the New York Public Library's Andrew Heiskell Braille and Talking Book Library. Her current library-based projects include group workshops highlighting mobile technologies for independent living and information literacy; programs introducing youth and adults to non-visual techniques for coding and making with Arduino; and the Dimensions project (a recipient of NYPL’s 2016 Innovation Grant for staff projects), which equips community members with the training and tools they need to create accessible tactile maps, diagrams, graphics and objects. Chancey was recognized as a 2017 Library Journal Mover and Shaker. In her Data & Society fellowship work in 2018-2019, Chancey hopes to deepen public understanding and spark widespread curiosity about how cloud-connected accessibility tools enhance or undermine digital equity, autonomy, security, and privacy.
Patrick Lauke
Patrick H. Lauke works as Principal Accessibility Engineer for The Paciello Group. In a previous life he was a Web Evangelist in the Developer Relations team at Opera. He's been involved in the discourse around Web Standards and Accessibility since 2001, actively speaking at conferences and participating in early initiatives such as the Web Standards Project (WaSP). Nowadays, he acts as a WCAG trash panda, contributing to the specification in the hopes of making the standard both robust and pragmatic. His personal corner of the web can be found at www.splintered.co.uk.
Lindsey Kopacz
Front End Developer and professional learner with accessibility expertise. Lindsey is passionate about breaking down concepts into understandable and relatable concepts, making it more approachable. In her free time, you can catch her making muscle gainz, reading, or drinking craft beer.
Alastair Somerville
Alastair Somerville is a sensory design consultant. He provides expert advice on cognition and person-centered design to companies and public organisations who provide both physical and digital products or services. He facilitates workshops on sensory and emotional design for corporations and major conferences, including SouthBy Southwest (SxSW) and UX Week. He is currently involved in cognitive accessibility and VR projects in visitor attractions and museums.
Sarah Pulis
Sarah is Director and co-Founder of Intopia with 9 years of digital accessibility. Sarah founded Intopia 3.5 years ago after working with PwC Australia and Media Access Australia. She is also founder of A11y Bytes and A11Y Camp, which have grown to be Australia's largest events on digital accessibility and inclusion.
Andrew Arch
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 in the Australian Government.
Lainey Feingold
I'm a disability rights lawyer who has worked in the accessibility space since the mid-1990s. I have worked with blind people and their organizations to advance digital accessibility with some of the largest companies in the United States. My book about this work is called Structured Negotiation, A Winning Alternative to Lawsuits. It tells the story of how blind people and their lawyers have used civil rights laws and collaboration to advance accessibility through relationship building and problem-solving instead of with conflict and expense. I do a lot of speaking and training about digital accessibility and about how the law can help advance the civil rights of people with disabilities to participate in the digital world. More on my website, including articles, media, and awards.
EJ Mason
EJ Mason is a web developer, accessibility specialist, and disability rights advocate. They bring their experience advocating for a more inclusive physical world into a passion for creating a better web. When they’re not writing JavaScript or teaching others to code, you’ll probably find them writing screeds about the art of storytelling or reclaiming contraband objects from a golden retriever named Thor.
Caitlin Cashin
Caitlin currently works as a Marketing Manager at Gatsby. Prior to this, she spent 8 years working at Deque Systems in a variety of marketing roles. At any given time, her responsibilities included content creation, SEO, product marketing, brand development, and more.
Javed Gangjee
Javed Gangjee is the Tech Lead at SpeakYourMind Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to creating, distributing, and supporting customized assistive technologies for individuals who are unable to effectively communicate due to neurological injury and disease.
Liz Davis
Liz Davis is a UX designer and disability advocate in Chicago. She is in the process of earning an MS in Human Computer Interaction from DePaul University.
Her life with a disability, and using a wheelchair offers a unique perspective on design. Her passion is bringing the disabled community and tech community together to create better designed products. When not shouting about much she hates stairs, she's taking her dog Hagrid to the park to chase squirrels.
Mike Gifford
One of Mike Gifford’s goals, through his company OpenConcept Consulting Inc., is to fix the accessibility problems at the source using the Drupal open source content management system. By taking this approach over a million web sites are enabled to become more accessible. Mike is a Drupal Core Accessibility Maintainer and has been spearheading improvements in the Drupal community since 2009. Mike founded A11yYOW back in 2011 and has been active in the accessibility unconference/camp movement since then. Beyond working with Drupal, Mike is increasingly looking at the systems which perpetuate barriers in our society. Mike is an advocate of bringing accessibility into open source projects so that everyone can benefit.
CB Averitt
CB Averitt is a Principal Consultant with Deque Systems. CB has been in web development for over 18 years. Having owned and operated Averitt Web Services, he has experience with front-end and back-end development as well as design and user experience. CB is certified by the IAAP as a Web Accessibility Specialist (WAS).
In 2005, CB was introduced to accessibility from working in the education sector. CB was heavily involved with making SC colleges Section 508 compliant. Since that time CB shares his expertise and passion for the open web with government, education and companies that range from small business to Fortune 50. CB has extensive knowledge in WCAG, AODA, and Section 508 regulations.
CB has completed hundreds of assessments and remediations in numerous technologies such as web, PDF and mobile. He has performed numerous presentations across the State of South Carolina. He has presented at major accessibility conferences such as CSUN’s “Annual International Technology and Persons with Disabilities Conference” as well as Knowbility’s “John Slatin AccessU”. CB has been a volunteer with The South Carolina Assistive Technology Advisory Committee (SC ATAC) for over 10 years.
Neil Milliken
Neil Milliken is Global Head of Accessibility at Atos, an invited expert for the W3C Cognitive Accessibility Taskforce , member of the Atos Scientific Community & Atos Distinguished Expert. He is co-founder of AXSChat Europe’s largest twitter chat with a focus on Accessibility & Inclusion. Neil is a member of the Board of Directors for WID & Chair of the Diversity Board for Institute of Coding. Neil was named in the top ten of the Shaw Trust Disability Power 100 list in 2018.
Hosts:
Cordelia McGee-Tubb
Cordelia McGee-Tubb is a lead accessibility engineer at Salesforce and a technology tutor at her local senior center. When not digging through the DOM or chatting about inclusive design patterns, she can often be found drawing comics, circumambulating cities, and/or scouring the internet for silly hats.
Eric Bailey
Eric is a designer at thoughtbot, with a focus on accessible and inclusive design. He's a member of the A11y Project, an occasional author at CSS-Tricks, and recovering curmudgeon.
