As an anxious introvert, I never expected to love public speaking as much as I do. But when I'm passionate about something, I need to share it. I'm passionate about accessibility, inclusive design, digital literacy, and technology that adapts as we age, and I don't think these are discussed enough in tech. By speaking with larger audiences, I hope other people will become passionate about these topics, too.
I’m celebrating Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) on May 21st by giving an internal lightning talk at my company. What are you or your team doing to advocate for digital inclusion this year?
I’m also joining Unhinged Design as a guest speaker. I’ll be talking with their live UX cohort about bridging the gap between design and engineering, navigating messy constraints, and making things happen, together.
In 2019, I got to co-host my favorite North American accessibility conference, #a11yTO Conf, with my favorite cactus-shirt-wearing accessibility pal, Eric Bailey. It was super fun to spend two days introducing all of the amazing speakers and making up really bad jokes on the spot with Eric. I'm still amazed no one threw tomatoes at us.
Probably the most fun I've ever had putting together a talk, "The Great Accessibility Bake Off" is structured like an episode of "The Great British Bake Off/Baking Show," with three key challenges: Signature, Technical, and Showstopper. I've had the pleasure of presenting versions of this talk three times in Australia, and would love the opportunity to present it again. Check out the slides on SlideShare.
The 2017 Funka Accessibility Days conference in Stockholm was my first international conference, and it absolutely blew me away. A bilingual event, it featured talks in both English and Swedish, with live audio translations, captioning, and sign interpretation in multiple sign languages. Not knowing any Swedish, I could walk into a Swedish language session, tune my headset to the English channel, adjust the volume to my liking, and easily follow along. Kudos to the event organizers for running such a seamless and inclusive event.
October 6th, 2025San Francisco, CA
May 30th, 2025Virtual
Bay Area Accessibility and Inclusive Design Meetup
January 29, 2025Virtual
July 11th, 2023Denver, CO
Microsoft Accessibility Innovation: Digital Inclusion of Older Adults Workshop
May 5th, 2023Virtual
Bay Area Accessibility and Inclusive Design Meetup
April 29th, 2020Virtual
November 20th, 2019San Francisco, CA
Benchmarking Digital Inclusion to Drive a Better Digital World
May 14th, 2019Copenhagen, Denmark
October 2018Toronto, Canada
October 2017San Francisco, CA
Bay Area Accessibility and Inclusive Design Meetup
September 2017San Francisco, CA
May 2017Sydney & Melbourne, Australia
April 2017Stockholm, Sweden
Design Research Meetup
August 2016
March 2015