Preparing for the new digital accessibility requirements

In December 2017 Ian moved to the UK Education Team at Microsoft, having previously held new business, account management, product management and partner development roles at Microsoft. The move was inspired by Ian’s wife, Dannie Woolner who has completed a six-year journey to change career having taken up a teaching and course manager position at a college in Surrey. Ian’s specialist areas are Office 365, enterprise mobility & security, information governance - focusing on how these technology groups unlock new teaching and learning opportunities for everyone. Although Ian is a generalist he is able to think in a transformative manner, evangelise and enthuse about new technologies but be mindful of their impact on others. Ian is also the Accessibility Champion for Education co-ordinating awareness activities to ensure ever person has access to the free tools and functionality Microsoft offers.

Bella Abrams is IT Director at the University of Sheffield. She has a background in the design and development of online education and training. Most recently she was working in Further Education in Hull and at Sheffield College.

Claire is Senior Learning Technologist (Digital Learning Systems) at the University of Derby and helps to provide an excellent staff and student experience through the provision of digital learning systems and services. She also co-chairs the European user group for Ally and contributed to the recent Policy Connect publication on Accessible VLEs.

Creative digital professional with a track record at great organisations in innovation, UX and interaction design, interactive education, content development, games, mobile web and apps, augmented reality and strategy. Capable manager of projects, stakeholders, budgets and finance, internal and agency teams, tendering and procurement processes, marketing, comms and fundraising.

Ben Watson, Head of Digital Accessibility at UCL. He has experience of working with all UK education sectors (primary, secondary, further and higher education) and many years experience of working to improve both the physical and digital accessibility of education organisations.

George Rhodes was formerly Digital Accessibility Compliance Lead for Kent County Council. His next challenge sees him take up a new role at the Home Office as Accessibility Consultant focussing on Digital Accessibility. He has recently completed a large research project documenting current awareness and good practice in Digital Accessibility across the UK public sector.

Abi is an accessibility consultant with the assistive technology charity AbilityNet where she supports organisations to ensure that their content, websites and apps are accessible to all. With over 15 years experiences in the assistive technology and accessibility field, she has led several projects to develop and deploy assistive technologies and accessible web applications. Working with the University of Southampton, she is also involved in research into the latest standards, policies and technologies and is a member of the W3C Cognitive and Learning Disabilities Accessibility Task Force.