Speakers

Anna E. Cook is a Senior Designer that specializes in building inclusive products. With ten years of experience, she is dedicated to creating scalable systems to support accessible practices across digital product teams. Anna is a Senior Designer at Microsoft and an M.S. student in Creative Technology & Design at the ATLAS Institute of CU-Boulder.

Devon is an accessibility specialist who's been in the field for about ten years after a short career as a librarian.

Devon's experience is primarily with accessibility consulting agencies and large tech organizations. She is most interested in solving problems to make accessibility work more sustainable for everyone involved, focusing on usability over compliance.

Devon enjoys gardening, writing, playing or running Dungeons & Dragons games, petting a cat, or playing video games; and identifies as a disabled person with a history of chronic illness.

Karen Hawkins is the Head of Accessible User Experience Design at eSSENTIAL Accessibility. She holds an honours Industrial Engineering degree, having specialized in Human Factors, and she is a certified accessibility professional (CPACC).

Karen has a decade of experience as a user experience designer and director leading and mentoring multidisciplinary teams in creating world-class user experiences and determining complex omnichannel digital solutions for leading global companies. She applies accessibility design thinking to all of her work, and she trains both colleagues and clients to do so as well.

David Swallow is Principal UX Consultant at TPGi responsible for delivering the highest quality UX and strategy services to clients. Formerly he was an academic researcher in human-computer interaction at the University of York, UK. There he gained a PhD in Computer Science, investigating how to integrate accessible web development practices into the existing workflows of professional web developers. Prior to that, David was a web developer, creating usable and accessible websites for property professionals.

Melanie is a decorated, disabled military veteran who works as a Senior Design Systems Engineer at HashiCorp. She is an invited expert for W3C’s WAI-ARIA working group and co-editor of the ACCNAME specification, a member of the Ember.js core team, and a board member for VetsWhoCode.

Olena is a digital producer on the CBC Kids and CBC Kids Olympics websites with a focus on accessibility. A graphic designer by training, she coded her first site in 1997 and has continued to work in digital media ever since.

She has produced children’s content for four Olympics, the PanAm Games, and the CBC Kids grade school site. She aims to apply accessibility best practices to kids’ digital products and content.

Niki leads digital accessibility for Canada’s public broadcaster, CBC. She and her team are passionate about providing equal digital media experiences for everyone living in Canada. She enjoys working with research and product development teams to experiment with accessibility features and embed accessibility into the development process. She’s also a proud member of Access to Success, supporting MBA students with disabilities and accessibility startups in North America.

Meggan is a big-picture thinker and ensures operational success by being committed to long-term strategic planning. She’s committed to accessibility in all sectors and actively promotes diversity by teaching inclusive design through mentoring and the education of clients and students alike.

Not only is she a skilled designer and illustrator, Meggan’s background as a project manager also helps her choose the most appropriate technical practices to create beautiful projects, breathing life into DDP's client's projects.

Meggan volunteers with several organizations to help share insight and expertise.

• Registered Graphic Designers (RGD) mentor
• Advisor to the Cambrian College graphic design program
• Former President of the Sudbury Design Society

Meggan is trained in the ins and outs of accessibility and enjoys hosting workshops or sessions on how to follow standards like WCAG, AODA, and ADA. As well as challenging the existing compliance frameworks and how they can become more inclusive.

Jonny James was born and raised in Guelph. Growing up, Jonny loved taking things apart. He wasn’t so good at putting things back together though. Does this sound like the perfect background to work in Web Accessibility? If you’re asking, ‘what does it take to become a Web Accessibility Professional?’, come to his talk to find out! It’s probably not what you think. Jonny works as a Principal Accessibility Engineer at TPGi, where he still takes things apart, and sometimes, finds himself putting things back together again, but each time, more accessible than before.

Scott is an accessibility specialist at Shopify. He spends his days auditing digital experiences for accessibility and discussing inclusive design principles with team leads, designers, developers, content strategists, partners, and legal teams. In his spare time, Scott runs an online store and writes about web accessibility at ScottVinkle.me. He enjoys snowboarding in the winter, mountain biking in the summer, and spending time with his wife and two children.

Adrian has been a member of the W3C Web Platform Working Group, W3C Accessible Rich Internet Applications Working Group, and W3C Accessibility Task Force. He has written articles for trade journals, web sites, and participated as an author and editor on five web-related books. Back in 1998 he co-founded a software development consulting firm before leaving at the start of 2016 to start all over. Some may recognize Adrian from his days helping to run evolt.org, one of the first communities for web developers. Adrian has been developing for the Web since 1993.

Jen is a user researcher focused on accessibility. She has a background in human-computer interaction, and has worked in government and the private sector, thinking about the accessibility of websites, apps and operating systems. Outside of work, Jen volunteers with StopGap Ottawa and the CNIB. In her spare time, she’s (slowly) learning ASL.

Matt May is Principal Designer on Adobe’s Product Equity team. His work includes integrating more equitable research and design practices across every aspect of the Adobe product lifecycle, training and mentoring the Adobe Design team, and advocating principles of accessibility, inclusive design and equity to the public at large.

Anna is an accessibility researcher at Microsoft with 8+ years of hands-on research experience in usability and feasibility in the area of accessibility.

During her research career, Anna has been trained as a professional researcher in several complementary and yet unique disciplines: first, in experimental psychology, sociology and pedagogy, and later, in neuro-rehabilitation sciences. Before joining Microsoft, she worked at Bloorview Research Institute, Max Planck Institute, the Universities of Alberta and Illinois and collaborated with a number of industry partners.

Anna is passionate about reimagining the way people interact with technology to increase their participation, become more productive and improve their overall quality of life.

Ann Mayer is a Senior Content Strategist at Reason One, a B-Corp digital agency that focuses on “helping those who do good do better”. Ann has more than 20 years of experience in the digital world, specializing in content planning, creation, and governance. She brings together expertise in accessible web design, user experience, information architecture, analytics & SEO, plain language and editorial best practices.

Dave is a seasoned technology executive who is passionate about designing and developing hardware and software for users of all abilities. He has extensive experience in design thinking, product management, and agile delivery. Dave is a champion for accessibility and builds high-performing teams fostering cognitive.

Shell Little (She/Her) is an Independent Accessibility Specialist, Inclusive Designer, and Cognitive Disability Speaker. She is currently in Burnout Recovery but continues to focus her time on speaking & writing. She has a BA in UX, with a focus in Accessibility, and is passionate about disability rights and game accessibility. Outside the office, Shell is a cat parent, hobbyist streamer, and overall Neurodivergent dork.

Michaela Peterhansl (Ella) is a UX designer at Ubisoft. Ella has a background in Computer Science and an MSc in Human-Computer Interaction. Her first touchpoints with accessibility were in the gaming community.

Accessibility changed Ella's perspective on my approach to UX design. Listening to and learning from people about their experiences is one of her favourite things.

Ella is CPACC certified, actively driving accessibility efforts and always excited to extend her knowledge to enable EVERYone to play games.

Sarah Higley is a web developer who works on accessibility on a component framework at Microsoft. She has been convincing people to give her money in exchange for code since 2011 and is happiest when working on weird web components. She spends her free time making pottery or hanging out with her dog.

Julianna (she/her, they/them) is a senior product manager within the product equity team at Adobe. Prior to heading into the private sector they founded and led accessibility and inclusive design communities of practices within the Government of Canada for more than a decade with a focus on corporate governance, evaluation, and playbook development. They also served as a digital fellow with the Canada School of Public Service. Julianna has led the development of key integrated metrics to evaluate products and product teams across a wide variety of digital products and services. Their work explores the intersection of identity, disability, and Indigenous perspectives, and the dismantling of systemic and emerging barriers to access.

Greg Williams is the Vice President & Chief Program Architect at Deque Systems, Inc. He oversees program development and operations for some of Deque’s largest customers, helping them to build mature, sustainable accessibility programs.

Prior to joining Deque, Greg spent more than 30 years in the information technology field focusing on large, complex program operations for Fortune 40 companies, and before that served in the United States Navy for a number of years. He had great success as the founder and owner of the Digital Accessibility Program Office for State Farm Insurance, building their practice from the ground up into one of the highest maturity level programs in the world between 2013 and 2018.

Greg has always been passionate about diversity and inclusion and has extended this passion to the disability and accessibility community - joining Deque Systems in 2018 to help launch and mature similarly successful programs across the globe.