Talks

Dennis Lembree is a Senior Accessibility Program Manager at GitHub. His extensive career also includes working at Deque Systems and on the PayPal and eBay accessibility teams. He has two decades of experience in writing articles, training, and presenting on digital accessibility. He is the creator of the first podcast on web accessibility, Web Axe, and created the first accessible Twitter app, Easy Chirp. Dennis lives outside Raleigh, NC with his wife, two teenage boys, and four cats. He enjoys playing guitar, watching football and tennis, hiking, and traveling.

Andrea has a post-grad certificate in Accessible Media Production from Mohawk College and a Bachelor's Degree in Journalism. As a document accessibility specialist and an accessible eLearning trainer and advocate, Andrea’s passion is to enable equal access to information for everyone, regardless of their abilities.

Hidde (@hdv) is a freelance front-end and accessibility specialist, currently working in the NL Design System team at the Dutch government. He is also involved in the W3C’s Open UI Community Group and Accessibility Guidelines Working Group. Hidde writes about accessibility and other things at hidde.blog.

Web and Android, Digital Accessibility engineer at Airbnb. Passionate about making digital experiences more inclusive to folks with disabilities.

Christina is a Certified Professional in Web Accessibility with expertise in design and development bridging the gap between accessibility, user experience, and code practices. With a strong background in both consulting and public speaking, Christina is dedicated to helping organizations implement inclusive design principles and craft accessible digital solutions.

I am the Practice Manager for Training at TPGi, so spend my days training our clients on how to make their websites and digital products accessible. I have a background in front-end development and development management, having worked in digital agencies in Toronto for 15 years before joining TPGi.

I am also the TPGi Advisory Committee representative for the W3C and currently co-chair the Accessibility Education and Outreach Working Group.

I live in Toronto with my wife and twin 12-year-old girls, and when I am not trying to make the digital world more accessible, I can be found working on my house, exercising, or relaxing with a crossword puzzle.

Niki Ramesh leads digital accessibility for CBC, Canada's public broadcaster and media company. She enjoys working with research and product development teams to experiment with accessibility features and learn about the needs of the disabled community. She’s CPWA-certified and a co-founder of Access to Success, a not-for-profit in disability inclusion. And she’s always up for long drives and a night of dancing!

Olena Sullivan, CPACC, leads the bilingual Accessibility Hub project for CBC/Radio-Canada, Canada's public broadcaster and media company. She has collaborated with researchers and focus groups to learn about the accessibility barriers in news and children's media. A graphic designer by trade, she coded her first site in 1997, in the age of tablets, Flash and Netscape.

Derek worked in the accessibility industry for 20 years, focusing on assistive technology software with Ai Squared, the makers of ZoomText. More recently, Derek moved to TPGi before starting at Indeed, making a direct impact on the accessibility of Indeed’s products and ultimately helping disabled job seekers. Derek always looks at the latest trends, tools, and approaches to make technology more accessible for everyone.

Nandita is a TEDx speaker and works as an Accessibility Product Manager at Microsoft where she builds products that empower users to create inclusive and accessible experiences for all users.

As a Mississippi State University alumna and Bagley College of Engineering Hall of Fame inductee, Nandita found her passion for accessibility and disability advocacy and pursued her Master’s degree in Human-Computer Interaction from Georgia Institute of Technology. Nandita was named Faces of Inclusive Excellence and awarded the Diversity Champion Award in 2020 for her work that advanced the principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion at Georgia Tech.

Jaunita joined Navy Federal in 2020 and works as an ADA Digital Program Manager leading the Enterprise Technical Accessibility Team. She chairs the Accessibility A11ies Community of Practice and serves on the leadership team of Navy Federal's disability Employee Resource Group. Juanita is also on the leadership team of the Internet Society’s Accessibility Special Interest Group, where she's working on developing an accessibility engineering bootcamp. She is active in the accessibility community and is passionate about creating an internet that's open, free and accessible to everyone.

Homer is a Front-end Developer with over 30 years of experience. He has a background in Behavioural Psychology, specializing in Neurology and Graphic Design, and brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise as a Staff UI Engineer, certified accessibility professional, and international speaker focused on advancing accessible front-end development.

Sarah Higley is a web developer primarily working on accessibility in control libraries and chat apps. She has been horking up web code in exchange for money since 2011, and is happiest when going down weird rabbit holes or making pottery. She is currently paid by Microsoft and also occasionally by the crows in her backyard.

Daniela Kubesch is an accessibility engineer who is passionate about user experience and inclusive design. She strongly believes in equality and inclusion and is committed to making digital services accessible.

Daniela holds master‘s degrees in Web Engineering and Digital Service Innovation and recently joined mindscreen as an accessibility tester. Daniela is also a co-creator of a11yphant.com, a platform that teaches the basics of web accessibility.

Brandon Biggs is an entrepreneur, researcher, inclusive designer, developer, and life-long learner. He is the CEO of XR Navigation, an Engineer at the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute, and a PhD candidate at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Brandon has a bachelor's in music from California State University East Bay and a master's in Inclusive Design from the Ontario College of Art and Design University. In 2021, he began his PhD in human-centred Computing from the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is almost completely blind from Lebers Congenital Amaurosis (LCA). His projects and ventures centre around building tools to solve some of the most difficult problems in the blindness field.

Rachael discovered their passion for accessibility while working on a project team at the University of Michigan that developed an Android application to provide indoor navigation for people with visual disabilities.

They joined the mobile team at Deque in 2018 as a web developer where they learned about both mobile and web accessibility before transitioning to a product owner and now developer advocate. Aside from being a digital accessibility engineer, Rachael is a proud cat parent to three fur babies and enjoys spending their free time at Zumba classes or diamond painting.

Matthew is responsible for digital accessibility at the S-Group, Finland's biggest retail chain. With a web developer background and experience with AI research projects, Mathew coaches in-house teams building digital products for the S-Group by developing their own accessibility competence and maturity with a focus on understanding the needs of our customers and colleagues with disabilities.

Laurence Dumont PhD, is a senior UX Researcher at CBC/Radio-Canada. She works mostly with streaming products, CBC Gem and Radio-Canada’s ICI TOU.TV. She has more than 10 years of experience in UX research and holds a PhD in cognitive psychology. She has a particular interest in accessibility in the neurodiversity space.

Lindsay Silver is an accessibility coach at T-Mobile where she advises and trains teams on accessible digital product development throughout the design, development, and testing lifecycles. Prior to T-Mobile, she worked as a web developer and digital accessibility consultant.

Medha is a product designer, speaker, and Google Women Techmakers Ambassador with a background in computer science. On the professional front, she crafts delightful digital experiences and conducts usability audits & research. In her spare time, she helps early designers get started and thrive in their design careers.

Over the past decade, Gerard has built and advised top-notch digital accessibility teams that have impacted millions of individuals worldwide. His experience ranges from supporting commercial financial applications responsible for transferring trillions of dollars globally, to enhancing accessibility on pre-Elon Twitter. Currently, Gerard drives the Atlassian Design System Accessibility Team where he collaborates with a group of exceptional designers and engineers to help enhance the accessibility of components used to build team productivity tools like Jira, Confluence, and Trello.

Gerard is recognized as a catalyst for change, igniting cultural transformation at both grassroots and executive levels. He possesses an understanding of the interdisciplinary nature of digital accessibility and effectively bridges gaps between HR, Legal, Marketing, Product, Design, Engineering and Quality Assurance teams.

He has a remarkable history of advocating for individuals with disabilities and promoting diversity and fairness in the workplace. Moreover, he is highly regarded for his expertise, as evidenced by his frequent speaking engagements at conferences nationwide and the widespread recognition of his courses on the Pluralsight learning platform as essential training for organizations worldwide.