Michael Burks currently serves as Section 508 Analyst working on the accessibility of electronic and information technology.
He is also the Webmaster and Public Information Officer of the International Center for Disability Resources on the Internet (http://www.icdri.org), a non–profit organization dedicated to presenting disability resources and information to those who are dealing with disability issues.
He works with the Internet Society (http://www.isoc.org) on disability issues and has made presentations and taught tutorials on web accessibility and disability issues around the world.
Christian Heilmann grew up in Germany and, after a year working with the handicapped for the red cross, he spent a year as a radio producer. From 1997 he worked for several agencies in Munich as a web developer. In 2000 he moved to the States to work for Etoys and, after the .com crash, he moved to the UK where he currently works as a lead developer for Agilisys. He publishes an almost daily blog at http://wait-till-i.com and runs an article repository at http://icant.co.uk. He is a member of the Web Standards Project’s DOM Scripting Task Force.
Bruce Lawson is a member of the Web Standards Project's Accessibility Task Force. He was brand manager for "glasshaus," which published many books on usable and accessible client-side development, including the first edition of this book, something he had an instrumental role in. He has also been invited by the Disability Rights Commission and the British Standards Institute to be on the review panel for the proposed British Accessibility Standard.
He lives in the UK with his wife, Nongyow, and his kids, Marina and James, but wishes they all lived somewhere warm.
Shawn Lawton Henry leads the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) worldwide education and outreach activities promoting Web accessibility for people with disabilities. She develops online resources to help Web developers understand and implement Web accessibility guidelines, and provides presentations and training on accessible Web design and development with the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). Shawn has presented and published papers on accessibility and usability for Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES), Computer-Human Interaction (CHI), Usability Professionals' Association (UPA), Web Design World, and many other conferences around the world (http://uiaccess.com/pres.html). Her publications also include "Everyone Interfaces" chapter in User Interfaces for All (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2000), Accessibility in the User-Centered Design Process (Georgia Tech Research Corporation, 2004), and other online resources (http://www.uiaccess.com/pubs.html).
Prior to joining W3C WAI, Shawn consulted with international standards bodies, research centers, government agencies, non-profit organizations, education providers, and Fortune 500 companies to develop and implement strategies to optimize design for usability and accessibility (http://uiaccess.com/experience.html). She developed UIAccess.com to share information on universal user interface design and "usable accessibility." Although Shawn holds a research appointment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and has a Massachusetts phone number, she actually lives in Madison, Wisconsin, USA. When not typing on her small laptop, she can often be found paddling her long sea kayak.
Andrew Kirkpatrick is Principal for Kirkpatrick Consulting, a web accessibility consultancy, and as of July 2005 is Principal Accessibility Engineer for Macromedia. Andrew was Director of Technology at the National Center for Accessible Media at WGBH in Boston, with a focus on accessibility consulting for corporate clients including America Online, Yahoo!, BT, Apple, and Macromedia. In addition to activities with corporate clients at NCAM, Andrew managed projects focused on web and interactive media accessibility, and was the product manager for MAGpie - NCAM’s software for creating captions and audio descriptions, and developer of STEP - NCAM’s Simple Tool for [accessibility] Error Prioritization. Andrew lives in Massachusetts with his beautiful wife and three of the cutest kids you’ll ever see.
Jim Thatcher received his PhD from the University of Michigan in 1963, one of the first PhD’s in Computer Science. Together with his thesis advisor, Dr. Jesse Wright, Jim then joined the Mathematical Sciences Department, IBM Research, in New York.
His research was in the area of mathematical computer science, automata theory, and data abstraction. Jim began moving away from the abstract and toward the practical when he and Dr. Wright, who is blind, began working on access to the Personal Computer for people who are blind. He developed one of the first screen readers for DOS which, in 1986, became IBM Screen Reader (and the phrase later became generic). After that he led the development of IBM Screen Reader/2 for OS/2 which was the first screen reader for the graphical user interface on the PC (1991).
In 1996 Jim left his Research post to join the IBM Accessibility Center (formerly IBM Special Needs Systems which produced Screen Reader, Home page Reader and other assistive technology) in Austin.
He served as Vice-chair of the Electronic and Information Technology Access Advisory Committee (EITAAC) which was impaneled by the Access Board to propose standards for Section 508; he chaired the sub-committee on Software Standards.
Dr. Thatcher led the effort to establish the IBM accessibility guidelines specifically for use by IBM’s development community. He wrote the course on Web Accessibility for Section 508 for ITTATC, the Information Technology Technical Assistance and Training Center, which was funded to support Section 508.
Jim has received numerous awards for technical work over his 37 year career with IBM. He received a Distinguished Service award from The National Federation of the Blind in 1994 and the Vice President’s Hammer Award for his work with the Department of Education on the development of Software Accessibility Standards in 1999.
Jim is co-author of the original version of this book, Constructing Accessible Web Sites (along with Paul Bohman, Michael Burkes, Shawn Lawton Henry, Bob Regan, Sarah Swierenga, Mark D, Urban and Cynthia Waddell,) published by glasshaus, UK, April 2002, and published again by Apress, Berkeley, CA, July 2003.
As the Executive Director of the International Center for Disability Resources on the Internet (ICDRI),
Cynthia Waddell provides leadership and project oversight for carrying out ICDRI’s overarching vision for the equalization of opportunities for people with disabilities. Internationally recognized as a public policy center organized by and for people with disabilities, ICDRI’s mission is to collect a global knowledge base of quality disability resources and best practices and to provide education, outreach, and training based on these core resources.
By combining her expertise in disability legislation and technology, Cynthia Waddell brings particular expertise in the provision of ICDRI’s Accessibility Oversight Professional Consulting Services for government and private sector clients. The free "Cynthia Says" web accessibility tool and portal was named after her and endorsed by the American Council of the Blind. The Cynthia Says portal (www.cynthiasays.com) is a joint Education and Outreach project of ICDRI, The Internet Society Disability and Special Needs Chapter, and HiSoftware.
In the world of accessibility, Cynthia Waddell is a nationally and internationally recognized expert in the field of electronic and information technology as well as employment and construction. Named in the "Top 25 Women on the Web" by Webgrrls International in 1998, she received the first US Government Technology Magazine award in 2003 for "Leadership in Accessibility Technology and For Pioneering Advocacy and Education."
Seeking a solution for access to information on the web for the community of people with disabilities, Cynthia Waddell authored the first accessible web design standard in the US that was recognized as a best practice by the Federal government and contributed to the eventual passage of legislation including the Electronic and Information Technology Accessibility Standards (Section 508). Her seminal paper, The Growing Digital Divide in Access for People with Disabilities: Overcoming Barriers to Participation, was commissioned by the US government and has been translated and cited by foreign governments, businesses, universities, disability organizations and entities around the world.
Cynthia Waddell’s work includes consultancies for the United Nations as an expert in accessible technology transfer for developing countries. She served as Rapporteur for the March 2003 Manila Declaration calling for accessible information communications technology (ICT) with reasonable accommodation. She also took part in the regional meeting in Quito, Ecuador regarding the norms and standards for people with disabilities resulting in the April 2003 Quito Declaration calling for an international convention (treaty) on the rights of people with disabilities. As a result, she was then called upon to present at the United Nations in June 2003 as the treaty expert on accessible ICT. This is similar to her participation on the Portuguese International Accessibility Board that led to Portugal’s adoption of the Portuguese Accessibility Guidelines for web sites in 1999.
Cynthia Waddell combines her expertise in disability legislation, public policy and technology to provide education and professional consulting services for government, higher education and businesses. In 2003 Waddell served as the accessible technology expert for the Bush Administration UK-US seminar exchange on employment and technology; following her work for several years in the "Boosting the UK Digital Economy- A Virtual Think Tank." In addi...
