OZeWAI - Accessibility News, Ask the Professionals - 30 June 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 News.

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:

David A. Kennedy (he/him)

David is a designer, specializing in accessibility and design leadership. Currently, he works as a government contractor in the United States, helping multiple agencies improve digital services for citizens. He curates the popular newsletter, Accessibility Weekly. In the past, he’s contributed to the WordPress open source project, and led a default WordPress theme release. He has a broad background in design, frontend development, and communications, spanning nonprofits, startups and government agencies. Before working on the web, Kennedy wrote words instead of code as a journalist.

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

Jack McElaney (he/him)

Jack is Microassist's Chief Revenue Officer. Jack's focus is digital accessibility and consulting within the corporate, financial services, and educational markets. For the last ten years he has curated "Accessibility in the News," a widely read industry newsletter that is a compilation of articles, blogs, conferences, training, announcements, tips, job listings, and a listing of accessibility statement pages. He was a founding member of the "Digital Accessibility Legal Summit", an active member of its steering committee, and a speaker and contributor at the Summit. Jack is a member of the "Standard Accessibility Reporting" Board of Directors.

Jack has held executive management positions at several Thomson Reuters companies, and at Sheshunoff Consulting & Solutions, where he was the managing director of risk services and was responsible for compliance and audit products and services. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Marketing from Northeastern University. Originally from Boston, Massachusetts, Jack currently resides in Austin, TX, with his wife, Nancy.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackmcelaneya11yinthenews/

Ricky Onsman (he/him)

Ricky is an Australian veteran of accessible web design and development both locally and internationally, from design agency work, freelancing, auditing, and training, to now writing testing rules, guidance articles and training courses for a global digital accessibility consultancy. He’s been a Committee Member of OZeWAI for over 10 years, is a regular host or panellist on Ask The Professionals webinars, presents on accessibility topics at conferences and meetups, and writes articles on related topics. Ricky is Principal Technical Writer at US digital accessibility giant Vispero, where he writes training courses, maintains the knowledge base and rules engine, and works on AI tools.

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

Moderated by:

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/