Crystal Preston-Watson takes us on her fascinating journey from self-taught coder and journalism dropout to becoming a Senior Digital Accessibility Analyst at Salesforce's Office of Accessibility. With refreshing honesty, she shares how her own visual impairment and an unexpected quality assurance ticket requiring screen reader testing sparked her passion for digital accessibility. What makes Crystal's work particularly groundbreaking is her exclusive focus on internal accessibility for Salesfor...
Aug 18, 2025•33 min
What does it take to lead effectively in today's diverse business landscape? Gisele Marcus, Vice Dean at Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis, brings a refreshing perspective shaped by her extensive Fortune 500 experience at companies like Accenture and Johnson Controls. The leadership skills needed today extend far beyond traditional business acumen. As Marcus explains, "Wherever I plant my feet, I want to be comfortable there and I want my colleagues to be comfortable the...
Aug 11, 2025•33 min
Communication is everything, but what if you couldn't make a private phone call? Tomer Aharoni, CEO and co-founder of Nagish, joins AXSChat to reveal how his team is revolutionizing accessibility for deaf and hard of hearing individuals. For millions with hearing loss, the simple act of making a phone call has historically required dependence on others—interpreters, captioners, or family members. Tomer shares how Nagish disrupts this paradigm with AI-powered technology that enables truly private...
Aug 05, 2025•28 min
When was the last time your history book mentioned Julius Caesar's seizures or Hannibal's missing eye? The erasure of disability from our historical narratives isn't accidental—it reveals our modern discomfort with integrating disability into stories of power and achievement. Caroline Bristow, Director of the Cambridge School Classics Project, takes us on a fascinating journey through ancient Rome's complex relationship with disability. From gravestone inscriptions that proudly declare "Meropnus...
Jul 28, 2025•37 min
What if fitness was designed to meet you exactly where you are, instead of demanding that you change to fit into someone else's idea of exercise? That's the revolutionary concept behind Second Skin Society, and founder Lee-Anne Reuber is making it a reality. Drawing from her 22 years of experience in disability support and her background as a yoga teacher, Leanne recognized a critical gap in the wellness industry. When the pandemic forced her yoga studio online, members kept highlighting how muc...
Jul 22, 2025•28 min
Dimple Khagram, founder and CEO of Purple Beard Training, talks about creating the UK's first Accessibility Specialist Apprenticeship in an interview with Antonio Santos and Neil Milliken. What began as a passion project has expanded into a major educational programme, with seven graduates earning five distinctions and 40 additional apprentices still completing the course. The journey wasn't straightforward. Dimple shares how her own experience with burnout inspired her to establish Purple Beard...
Jul 11, 2025•28 min
What happens when a curious quality assurance tester encounters an odd request about color contrast? For Iulia Brehuescu, it sparked a journey that would transform not only her career but also impact accessibility practices across a global pharmaceutical giant. Iulia's story is both inspiring and cautionary. From her early days testing web platforms at a digital agency to her current role shaping global accessibility strategy at Sanofi, she shares the exhilaration of turning a passion project in...
Jul 04, 2025•25 min
What does digital accessibility look like in a mobile-first continent with 1.4 billion people speaking hundreds of languages across 50+ countries? Irene Mbari-Kirika, Executive Director and Founder of inABLE , takes us on an illuminating journey through Africa's rapidly evolving accessibility landscape. The conversation begins with inABLE foundational work teaching digital skills to blind students in Kenya. This initial focus quickly expanded when Irene recognized that teaching assistive technol...
Jun 27, 2025•30 min
Accessibility in mobile technology has evolved from seemingly impossible challenges to remarkable innovations. Join us as we welcome back Sabine Lobnig from the Mobile and Wireless Forum to discuss this fascinating journey. Sabine shares her unique path into accessibility, beginning with linguistics and a fascination with sign language that connected her to the deaf community. This led to her work with the Mobile and Wireless Forum, where she has spent over 13 years championing digital inclusion...
Jun 20, 2025•28 min
The countdown to the European Accessibility Act has begun, and organizations across the EU and beyond are racing to understand what this landmark legislation means for their products and services. In this timely conversation, accessibility expert Susanna Laurin returns to AXSChat to separate fact from fiction about the EAA ahead of its June 2025 implementation. Susanna reveals a concerning readiness gap, with European-based companies generally better prepared than their American counterparts who...
Jun 13, 2025•28 min
Accessibility and sustainability collide in this eye-opening conversation with Heather Neff, CEO of Equivalent. She returns to AXSChat to share groundbreaking developments in their mission to transform static graphics into responsive, accessible code. What if every image online could instantly adapt to your device settings, work seamlessly with screen readers, and consume a fraction of the energy? That's exactly what Equivalent is achieving through their revolutionary approach to Scalable Vector...
Jun 06, 2025•27 min
The most valuable accessibility conversations are happening in unexpected places. In this reflection on recent events, the AccessJet team shares how conferences focused on broader topics yielded surprising insights about disability inclusion, corporate transparency, and AI's potential. At Fair Cultures Barcelona, discussions about corporate transparency revealed why accessibility progress remains challenging despite public commitments. Organizations often present themselves as champions of inclu...
Jun 03, 2025•18 min
When we're constantly fighting for baseline accessibility compliance, it's easy to miss the quiet victories happening around us. In this candid conversation, returning guest Steve Tyler shares refreshingly positive experiences that demonstrate what's possible when companies truly commit to inclusive design. Steve recounts his surprisingly delightful experience switching to EE broadband, discovering Braille labelling physically built into the router and an online contract process that automatical...
May 22, 2025•36 min
What happens when a global company with 70,000 employees embraces neurodiversity as a driver of innovation? Tristan Lavender, founder and chair of Philips Neurodiversity Network, takes us behind the scenes of building one of the company's largest employee resource groups from the ground up. Diagnosed with autism in his early twenties, Lavender's journey from struggling young professional to neurodiversity advocate offers a compelling framework for creating psychological safety in the workplace. ...
May 18, 2025•27 min
Dr. Kelly Tzoumis, professor emeritus at DePaul University and lecturer at Johns Hopkins, discusses virtual exchange programs that make global learning accessible to students with disabilities. These innovative approaches embed intercultural experiences directly into curriculum, overcoming barriers of cost and physical accessibility while building crucial competencies. • Virtual exchange goes beyond video calls—students are prepared to interact across cultures before meeting peers • Less than 10...
May 12, 2025•31 min
What happens when accessibility transcends from a legal obligation to a strategic business advantage? That's exactly what Gina Bhawalkar, Principal Analyst for Digital Accessibility at Forrester Research, illuminates in our fascinating conversation about the evolving digital accessibility landscape. Gina brings two decades of experience to the table, having started her journey testing products with people with disabilities before moving into leadership roles where she championed accessibility wi...
May 02, 2025•32 min
Judge Ginger Lerner-Wren brings a rare and powerful perspective to the criminal justice system. With nearly three decades on the bench in Florida and a background in disability rights advocacy, she offers insights you simply won't find elsewhere. Her journey from working directly in a psychiatric hospital to founding America's first Mental Health Court has equipped her with a truly unique understanding of how justice and healing can intersect. What happens when we apply artificial intelligence t...
Apr 25, 2025•29 min
Lia Raquel Neves,, founder of EITIC Consulting, offers a thought-provoking exploration into the ethical dimensions of artificial intelligence and its profound implications for accessibility and inclusion. Drawing from her background in philosophy and bioethics, Lia challenges the common assumption that technology is neutral, instead arguing that our creations inherently reflect our values, biases, and blind spots. The conversation delves into crucial gaps between AI regulations and accessibility...
Apr 21, 2025•28 min
Discover the transformative power of accessibility in the gaming world with Verónica Morales Beltrán, an accessibility specialist at Adesso Mobile. Having transitioned from leading localization at Electronic Arts Germany to championing digital inclusion, Veronica reveals how gaming has evolved beyond mere entertainment to become a vital space for connection, creativity, and belonging. Why do we play games? The answer extends far beyond simple fun. For many, especially those with disabilities, ga...
Apr 11, 2025•28 min
What does independence truly mean for someone who can't see? This question lies at the heart of Envision's revolutionary approach to assistive technology for blind and low-vision individuals. Karthik Kannan's journey began with a simple career counseling visit to a blind school in India. While his sighted nephew dreamed of building cities on Mars, the blind students shared much more fundamental aspirations: reading books independently, visiting the beach alone, or simply living by themselves som...
Apr 07, 2025•31 min
Gareth Ford-Williams shares how his son Zak inability to access age-appropriate BBC games sparked a career revolutionizing digital accessibility, culminating in the development of BBC iPlayer with comprehensive accessibility features. • Gareth's journey began when six-year-old Zak couldn't access BBC games designed for older children • Personal connections and family experiences often drive innovation in accessibility • While working as BBC brand manager, Gareth questioned why they would build r...
Mar 31, 2025•29 min
Jane Hatton, CEO of Evenbreak, shares how her organization is transforming disability employment globally through inclusive recruitment practices and partnerships with local disability organizations. • Evenbreak started as a UK job board for disabled job seekers but has expanded into a global enterprise • Every team member at Evenbreak has lived experience of disability, representing diverse conditions and backgrounds • Traditional recruitment methods like CV screening and interviews perpetuate ...
Mar 21, 2025•31 min
Daniel Mont, CEO and co-founder of the Center for Inclusive Policy, shares insights on bridging the gap between disability advocacy and effective policy implementation. The conversation explores how to move beyond awareness-raising to create evidence-based policies that meaningfully improve the lives of people with disabilities. • Center for Inclusive Policy was created to address the need for evidence-based disability inclusion policies • About 25% of households include someone with a disabilit...
Mar 13, 2025•26 min
Mike Gifford from Civic Actions joins us to discuss the Web Almanac, a remarkable project analyzing 17 million websites and 83 terabytes of data to track accessibility trends across the web. He shares insights about comparative accessibility performance across countries, revealing how European websites generally outperform American ones despite the US having a 30-year head start in accessibility legislation. • Web Almanac provides annual snapshots comparing accessibility across millions of websi...
Mar 08, 2025•33 min
Are traditional banking systems failing those who most need them? In this thought-provoking episode, David Agar and Penny Roberts share their mission to revolutionize financial accessibility through their innovative app, Bankability. Reflecting on their personal journey as parents of a child with disabilities, they delve into the crucial need for hyper-personalization in banking solutions. With over 15 million adults in the UK facing accessibility barriers, the couple’s insights highlight how fi...
Mar 02, 2025•30 min
Unlock the secrets of transforming assistive technology with Steve Tyler, the pioneering Director of Assistive Tech and Transformation at Leonard Cheshire. Join us as Steve shares his compelling journey from the world of clinical psychology to becoming a beacon for disability support and technology integration. With invaluable insights into collaborations with major tech companies, discover how Steve is championing accessibility and inclusive practices that are reshaping the tech landscape for p...
Feb 21, 2025•37 min
Katrin Langensiepen, the only visibly disabled woman in the European Parliament, joins us to share her compelling journey toward disability inclusion in European politics. Discover how Katrin is pushing boundaries within the institution, advocating for rights and accessibility despite the hurdles. Her efforts to champion the European Disability Card illustrate her dedication to creating a more inclusive society, emphasizing the card's significance in improving access and recognition across membe...
Feb 14, 2025•27 min
This episode explores the vital role of accessibility in fintech, highlighting efforts made by industry leaders to create inclusive financial solutions for individuals with disabilities. Through personal stories and expert insights, the discussion underscores the importance of understanding unique user needs and fosters a call to action for the industry to innovate and collaborate towards meaningful change. • Kathryn Townsend discusses her dual role in promoting accessibility • Emphasis on the i...
Feb 09, 2025•29 min
There is a growing urgency to address the threats faced by DEIA initiatives in the wake of recent political upheavals. The episode highlights the emotional impact of these changes on the disability community, the need for solidarity, and the importance of advocating for inclusive practices amid the ongoing challenges. • Government dismantling of DEI programs • Emotional experiences of disability advocates • The connection between recent crises and DEIA backlash • Opportunities for activism and c...
Feb 03, 2025•31 min
Ever wondered how accessibility standards are shaping up in Europe? Tune in to hear from Susanna Laurin, the dynamic director of the Funka Foundation, as she uncovers the creative origins of the foundation's name and its pivotal role in empowering people with disabilities across Europe. With a wealth of experience in accessibility and her instrumental efforts in co-founding the IAAP, Susanna offers a deep dive into the foundation's transformative work, including groundbreaking research, consulta...
Jan 20, 2025•29 min
