Digital Accessibility

Jeremy Katherman, USAA, Lead Accessibility Advisor

Jeremy talks about his early work with accessibility through tech support at his university. After that he has enjoyed a lengthy career at USAA where he helped build an accessibility team that supports activities throughout the organization. 

Lainey Feingold, Author, Negotiator, Lawyer, Speaker at Law Office of Lainey Feingold

Lainey describes her career as a legal advocate for people with disabilities. She talks about her process of structured negotiation to foster change without litigation. 

Christopher Land, Oracle, Senior Accessibility Technical Program Manager

Chris started out in web development and was first exposed to accessibility working for the University of Michigan. That led to accessibility consulting work at Deque and Level Access where he learned from a great team of experts and did a lot of training. Now he is Senior Accessibility Technical Program Manager at Oracle. 

Poornima Subramanian, Princess Cruises, Sr. Digital Accessibility SME

Poornima talks about learning on the job about disabilities and getting started as a tester with assistive technologies. She moved into the role of subject matter expert and assisted developers to understand what was relevant to their role. Her work at Holland America merges digital accessibility with a user experience that takes place in the physical world of a cruise. 

Glen Walker, TIAA, Principal Accessibility Architect

Glen talks about his early years as a software engineer and his personal interest in keyboard support. This lead him to accessibility work that included solving screen reader issues and compliance with Section 508 and WCAG. In his consulting work he continues to help other developers by sharing knowledge in a variety of ways. 

Joanne Lastort, Booz Allen Hamilton, Digital Accessibility Specialist

Joanne talks about her first career as a professional pastry chef. The loss of use one of her hands moved her to working in IT. Her desire to still be a keyboard user brought her into accessibility testing at the IRS and the FCC. Now she is part of the Section 508 team at Booz Allen Hamilton at the Department of Labor.

Zack Klein, iSoftStone, Software Test Engineer II

Zack talks about his work as an accessibility tester and his unique perspective as a person who is totally blind. His love of technology helps him solve issues with the accessible content he relies on. He describes the tools he prefers including his Mac, iPhone and refreshable braille display.

Jen Devins, Google, Head Accessibility UX

Jen talks about her journey into user experience and design and then an opportunity to work with accessibility. She considered accessibility from a UX perspective as a champion of the user. Jen describes how research helped to develop training to create more awareness about the need for accessibility. 

Andrew Hayward, Twitter, Accessibility Engineer

Andrew Hayward talks about discovering accessibility in his early years as a web developer. He describes his path that weaved through Mozilla and most recently found him helping to set up an emerging accessibility team at Twitter. 

Nicole Bergstrom, Hilton, Senior Director of Digital Accessibility

Nicole Bergstrom talks about her first exposure to accessibility while working in the federal government. She describes her move to Hilton and how they are building accessibility into all the touchpoints of their customers for digital services.