OZeWAI - Accessibility Careers, Recruitment and Mentoring, Ask the Professionals - September 2026

Introduction

The 'Ask the Professional' events are free and recognised as professional development for many organisations.

Join OZeWAI members and guests, including knowledgeable digital accessibility experts, specialists and researchers from all over the world, as well as leaders in the industry, government and non-profit organisations, to explore and support digital inclusion topics and ideas.

Topic: Accessibility careers, recruitment and mentoring.

This panel event will bring together accessibility specialists for you to:

• Ask questions of the experts 

• Share knowledge of similar issues

• Find where to get help with accessibility advice and expertise

Session access requirements

The session agenda and access details will be shared 2 days before the event. This is a remote online event using Zoom.

Please email info@ozewai.org if you wish to share any tools, communication methods or anything else we should consider to ensure you can fully participate in the session.

Thank you from the OZeWAI Committee

Panelists:

Amanda Mace (she/her)

Amanda is a Subject Matter Expert in Digital Accessibility with more than 10 years of experience in the industry. She manages the Australasia office for GrackleDocs while growing and promoting the brand across the region. She also manages the audit team which is responsible for manual WCAG audits for our clients. Amanda is the only Australian-based W3C evangelist and a W3C Australian Chapter manager.

When it comes to accessibility, she believes that innovation with accessibility built into it provides security, independence, and privacy for people with disabilities and ultimately better, more usable digital products for all. She has spent her career advocating that it is everyone's job to do their bit to remove barriers so all people can have equal access and equal opportunity to the digital world. Using her expertise in WCAG and PDF/UA to educate and help others understand digital access as well as how to go above and beyond standards, to ensuring great user experiences.

She is certified by the Australian Computer Society (ACS) as a Certified Professional. Having begun her accessibility career as a WCAG auditor/tester, she worked her way up in that small business through to management. Throughout her career, She has had many opportunities to contribute to educating others about digital accessibility including, co-authoring a book chapter for the textbook, "Web Accessibility A Foundation for Research," as well as a white paper entitled, "Digital Accessibility: Perceptions, Expectations and Reality."

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanda-mace-85171b77/  .

Rachael Bradley Montgomery, Ph.D. (she/her)

Rachael Bradley Montgomery, Ph.D. has been working in accessibility and usability for over 20 years. She currently serves in the following roles:

• Co-chair of the W3C Accessibility Guidelines Working Group

• Executive director of Accessible Community

• Adjunct lecturer at University of Maryland’s College of Information Studies (iSchool)

• Member of the Maryland Initiative for Digital Accessibility

Rachael has a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland, College Park and an MS from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachael-bradley-montgomery-ph-d-6847144/

Sheri Byrne-Haber (she/her)

Sheri designs accessibility programs that help large organizations turn policy, product practice, and inclusion commitments into durable day-to-day work. Her work spans strategy, governance, training, accessible design and remediation, analytics, and maturity modeling across digital properties.

She has a background in computer science, law, and business lets me work across the technical, regulatory, and organizational decisions that shape accessibility outcomes. She brings ADA Coordinator and IAAP Certified Professional in Accessibility Core Competencies credentials, along with experience applying Lean and Agile methods to accessibility work.

Sheri contributes to the field through the IAAP Global Leadership Council and Certification Committee, the Information Technology Industry Council VPAT subcommittee, and W3C Silver and Accessibility Maturity Model work. I care about building programs that teams can use, measure, and sustain.

She also writes and speaks about disability, accessibility, and inclusive design. She has published more than 300 articles, reaching close to a million readers annually. She was named the 2020 Medium UX Collective Author of the Year. 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sheribyrnehaber/

Moderated by:

Jaunita Flessas (she/her)

Jaunita is a Melbourne-based accessibility leader and consultant who previously led the Enterprise Technical Accessibility Team at Navy Federal Credit Union. Empower Accessibility is her consulting practice that delivers audits, training, and policy guidance to embed accessibility across products and organisations. globa11y is her social enterprise that trains and employs people with disabilities to build accessible digital experiences. She works full-time at IRIS Software and contributes to the W3C’s Accessibility Guidelines, ARIA, and Accessible Platform Architectures groups. A member of the Internet Society’s Accessibility Standing Committee and a frequent global speaker, she is focused on building a future internet that works for everyone.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaunitageorge