OZeWAI online event - Ask the Professionals - 23 January 2024

Introduction

OZeWAI has moved from running an annual conference to partnering with many in-person and online conferences and offering membership benefits as part of individual and organisation membership tiers. Benefits include online events to ask the tough accessibility questions of the professional accessibility specialists. 

This panel event will bring together three accessibility specialists who work for industry, for you to:

• Ask questions from 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:

Derek Featherstone

Derek Featherstone is the VP of Accessibility & Inclusive Design at Salesforce, and is an internationally known author, speaker, practitioner, and authority on accessibility and inclusive design. Derek has spent the last decade creatively guiding enterprise organizations towards sustainable and proactive accessibility programs through inclusive design methods, creating processes that shift left, and facilitating culture change. 

Gerry Neustatl

Gerry is the Lead Accessibility Specialist at the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC). The ABC is home to the nation’s most loved and trusted news and information, current affairs, lifestyle and entertainment products like ABC NEWS, ABC iview, ABC listen, triple j and the Hottest 100, and ABC KIDS. The ABC wants everyone to use their digital products and services, so they design for inclusion, then build and test product accessibility seeking continual improvement throughout their life cycles.

Sean Murphy

Sean Murphy has a genetic eye condition called Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP) and lost majority of his vision around  16. He is married with two beautiful daughters living in Sydney. A self-proclaimed tech nerd, a lover of playing and listening to Flamenco and Classical Guitar, reading large variety of books genre, loves a good whisky and doing outdoor activities E.G. snow skiing, Water Skiing, caving, rock climbing  and driving cars when they let him.

He is one of the Accessibility Managers of Telstra Consumer and Small Business, a team comprising around 15 A11y SMEs. Very passionate about accessibility to ensure everyone has equal access to technology. Formally on the Human Rights Commission future Technology project discussing AI Ethics and accessibility. Prior director of the Digital Gap Initiative NGO Advocating for laws, standards and social Strategies for accessibility and inclusion for all in the digital age; Formally worked at Freedom Scientific on the Jaws for Windows Screen Reader; Conducted research for the Australian Council of Learned Academies (ACOLA) paper on AI Ethics impact to Accessibility and disabilities.

He is a role model through his ‘can-do’ attitude which inspires others in their daily life. If a barrier is found, he always seeks a solution. A quote from one of Sean’s many presentations that he has done, sums his attitude up nicely - “don’t look at me differently, rather look at the similarities between us”.

Moderated by:

Brigitta (Bri) Norton

Bri is a Digital Strategist and User Experience and Accessibility specialist based in Canberra, Australia and has been an Accessibility Lead for both State and Federal Government. Bri has more recently co-developed inclusive research workshops to share how to include accessibility earlier in the project lifecycle which includes engaging with people with disability as part of inclusive research activities.

Amongst her professional experience with government agencies and local businesses, Bri has previously been the Australian Government Digital Transformation Agency’s Accessibility and Inclusivity Lead, is the co-chair and the conference convenor for Australia’s Web Accessibility Initiative OZeWAI.org, a Standards Australian Accessible ICT Procurement Committee Member and a member of the ResearchOps.Community Cheese Board.