Announcement: I have retired from UC Berkeley. I am therefore available to do professional public speaking and accessibility consulting. Please contact me at speaker@accessaces.com to discuss hiring me for your organization.
My Qualifications
Personal Experience
I have used many different forms of access technology my whole life. I was given my first computer in grade 9 and that is when everything changed for me. For the first time, I was able to write papers at the same time as my peers. I also very early learned the fun of playing games. Back then the games were mostly text adventures, but they were so much fun.
When I started university, I was in the small group of people that had computers and knew how to use them. I spent a lot of time teaching my disabled friends and other students how to use many different kinds of technology, including accessibility solutions. When I graduated, I became an access technology trainer . I also got to do product accessibility testing and became known as a brutally honest reviewer. My thoroughness earned me a nickname: The Punisher. I was always kind but also honest, since to be otherwise would help no one.
Direct Service with Disabled Students
For the past 20 years, I have been working at the University of California -Berkeley. My first job was to help disabled students find ways to negotiate inaccessible systems and technology so they could be competitive with their nondisabled peers. I would evaluate their needs and then match them with technology solutions, from basic word processing to augmentative communication and many other options. Some of them had never used accessible technology and had no way of knowing how it could benefit them. I also helped find funding and provided training on how to use the tools. Every day I saw students that were the brightest and best, and just needed accommodations. It was wonderful to connect these students with technology that allowed them to thrive.
Digital and Product Accessibility
At the same time I was volunteering to help web developers and content creators make mainstream technology more accessible. After 9 years, I transferred to the Information Technology team to work on digital accessibility full time. I like to tell people that I went from working with one student at a time to systemically fixing the technology itself. I would never have been able to do this without the time I spent with students learning what barriers they faced.
My IT job involved working across the whole University of California system to address barriers. I started by creating and writing a digital accessibility policy for all the campuses that covered how to develop and purchase accessible technology. This critical policy laid out both expectations for accessibility and a standard with goals and guidelines for everyone to meet. The team I led for the next 12 years provided training, presentations, and documentation for policy support.
I have also consulted with companies like Hewlett Packard, Cisco, Intuit, Yahoo, Apple, Google, and Microsoft. I now serve on multiple corporate advisory boards and perform accessibility testing on many different products.
Going Forward
Recently I was leading the University of California rewrite of their accessibility policy,. Once that project was nearing a close I decided that it was time for me to share my knowledge and experience beyond the UC. Today I am starting on my new journey of working with companies and educational institutions both big and small to help them create more accessible products and environments. I have talks available on topics including Artificial Intelligence, accessibility best practices, and more. Please review my Talks page.
What I Will Be Blogging About
I still plan to continue this blog as a big picture overview of accessibility and other issues for people with disabilities. As I find things that do not seem to be understood or topics that I feel have to be explored, I will post those here. A current interest of mine is home electronics and appliances, since my product options in this area have become increasingly narrower due to inaccessibility. I will continue to interview people with disabilities to learn what home electronics do and do not work for them, and can discuss the results with product developers. I also will try to review more devices on my YouTube channel, so I invite manufacturers to send me their products to review. I also welcome video reviews from other disabled users. If you want to support this effort please watch my YouTube channel and website for ways to do so.
I am looking forward to this new phase of my life. It will be fun to meet new people and to work with companies that want to know more about how they can be more accessible to everyone. I hope very much to find more accessible products every day and share them with all of you, my friends around the world.
I plan to spend many more years teaching and advocating for better accessibility and inclusion. Please join me on this journey and let me know your thoughts.