Speakers

Mike Paciello

Founder/CEO
WebABLE

Mike Paciello is Founder of WebABLE, a New Hampshire-based, digital marketing & professional services company, dedicated to delivering news about the disability and accessibility market.

Starting at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in 1982, Mr. Paciello has served as an international leader, technologist and authority in the areas of emerging technology, accessibility, usability and electronic publishing. Mike is the previous Founder of The Paciello Group (TPG), a world-renown software accessibility consultancy acquired in 2017 by Vispero, a leader in assistive technology for the blind and visually-impaired. TPG provides professional services and products to hundreds of clients including Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Salesforce.Com, Pearson, Wells Fargo, SSA, IRS, GSA and the VA.

Mr. Paciello, along with several colleagues, formed the International Committee for Accessible Document Design (ICADD), the organization responsible for creating ICADD-22, the first-ever electronic publishing standard that produced Braille, large text and voice-ready publications from a single source file. ICADD-22 is recognized as a formalized segment of ISO 12083, the American Association of Publishers SGML standard for publishers.

Mike authored the first book on web accessibility and usability, “Web Accessibility for People with Disabilities” and, in 1997, Mr. Paciello received recognition from President William Clinton for his work in the creation of World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). He has served as an advisor to US Access Board and other various federal agencies since 1992.

On April 3rd, 2008, Mike and co-chair Jim Tobias, presented a historic series of internationally harmonized technical recommendations to bridge the gap between technology and people with disabilities. As a result of these recommendations, the US Access Board released a final rule that updates accessibility requirements covered by Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 along with guidelines for telecommunications equipment subject to Section 255 of the Communications Act of 1934. These revised standards and guidelines were published in the Federal Register on January 18, 2017 and went into effect in January, 2018.

Mike was the recipient of the 2016 Knowbility Lifetime Achievement and the 2020 ICT Accessibility Testing Symposium Social Impact awards.

Lainey Feingold

Disability rights lawyer and author

Lainey Feingold is a disability rights lawyer who has worked in the digital accessibility space since 1995. She is also an author and an international speaker. Lainey along with her blind clients and co-counsel helped negotiate the first web accessibility agreement in the United States more than twenty years ago. She has worked with dozens of companies on their accessibility initiatives since that time. Lainey is the author of Structured Negotiation: A Winning Alternative to Lawsuits. Her book shares stories and strategies from twenty-five years of collaborations and relationship building to help create an inclusive digital world.

Lainey has been named a Legal Rebel and problem solver of the year by the American Bar Association and has twice received a California Lawyer Attorney of the Year Award — all for her work in digital accessibility and Structured Negotiation. Lainey is a thought leader on both Structured Negotiation and digital accessibility, and serves as a consultant for Disability:IN, a leading business non-profit working with Fortune 1000 companies on disability inclusion initiatives. Learn more on Lainey's website, follow her on Twitter, or connect on LinkedIN.

Reginé Gilbert

UX designer, author, and digital accessibility advocate
New York University

Reginé Gilbert is a user experience designer, educator, and author with over ten years of experience working in technology. She has a strong belief in making the world a more accessible place that starts and ends with the user.

Reginé’s areas of research focus are digital accessibility, inclusive design, and immersive experiences.

In 2019, Reginé’s first book, Inclusive Design for a Digital World: Designing with Accessibility in Mind, was released through Apress publishing. In addition, Doug North Cook and Reginé Gilbert are working on a book titled Human Spatial Computing, which Oxford University Press will publish in 2023.

Sheri Byrne-Haber

Senior Staff Architect, Accessibility
VMware

Bio coming soon!

Henny Swan

Director
TetraLogical

Henny is a Director at TetraLogical and a user experience and digital accessibility specialist with almost 20 years' experience.

Formerly at the BBC, TPGi, Opera Software, and the Royal National Institute of Blind People, Henny has contributed to the W3C Web Accessibility Education and Outreach Group, been co-lead of the Web Standards Project International Liaison Working Group, and co-authored the Inclusive Design Principles and BBC Mobile Accessibility Guidelines.

Henny focuses on inclusive experiences for people with disabilities on the web. This includes design and research of web content across traditional platforms such as desktop, mobile and TV, multimedia, and the intersection of web with the physical world.

In her spare time, she can be found swimming all year round in her native Brighton on the south coast of the UK and picking up endless socks left around the house by her 12-year-old.

Thomas Watkins

Principal UX Architect
3Leaf, LLC

Thomas Watkins is a thought leader, speaker and industry practitioner located in Houston TX. He is a life-long learner who has a passion for bringing greater clarity to the world. Thomas has made it his career’s focus to combine technology with design psychology in order to drive business success. He specializes in helping his business partners bring their own brilliant ideas to life, by translating complexity into simplicity. The scope of his work has included interface design for mobile, SaaS system architecture, usability research, and data visualization.

Stéphanie Walter

UX Researcher & Designer (consultant)
Maltem Consulting

Stéphanie is a User Researcher and Designer who focuses on building user-centered, inclusive and accessible products and services. She spent the last 12+ years helping her clients deliver successful projects in different industries (banking, financial, automotive, healthcare, press, travel, etc.).

She likes to share her passion for her UX work all around the world. She has taken this beyond her successful blog, conferences and workshops. She discusses a wide range of topics, including mobile UX, enterprise UX, cognitive biases, inclusive design, design process and designer - developer relationship. You can follow her on social media for qualitative curated UX design content.

Corbb O'Connor

Independent Accessibility Consultant

Growing up as a total nerd, Corbb’s birthday and Christmas lists included such items as a cash register, stapler, desk phone with transfer capabilities, and hotel stationery. Why? Because he was pretending to run his own businesses. Years later, after studying journalism, political communication and economics at The George Washington University, he started his own consulting company. After working with clients for a few years who frequently used Corbb to serve as a liaison with developers to ensure that content and web sites were accessible for people with disabilities, Corbb joined the consumer banking team at U.S. Bank as an accessibility subject matter expert.

Today, Corbb leads a team of testing professionals at Siteimprove. His team uses assistive technology to manually test customers’ web sites, apps, PDFs and Microsoft Office documents to ensure that everyone can access the information at the same time and with the same level of effort. A frequent presenter at accessibility conferences and corporate symposia, Corbb is focused today on encouraging more businesses to track their KDIs (Key Disability Indicators) alongside their KPIs. He spends most weekends exploring the city with his six-year-old son Silas, and—most of all—he looks forward to powering up a Ham radio (call sign K0RBB) or climbing aboard a paddleboard.

Crystal Preston-Watson

Senior Digital Accessibility Analyst
Salesforce

Crystal Preston-Watson is the Senior Digital Accessibility Analyst at Salesforce. Crystal believes that accessibility is a civil and human right and is dedicated to making innovative, inclusive, and accessible applications for everyone.

Shell Little

Independent Accessibility Specialist, Inclusive Designer, and Cognitive Disability Speaker

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.