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Andrew RonksleyWeb Accessibility Consultant Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) Andrew Ronksley will train at the Joint WIPO-ITU Workshop on February 5, 2010
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Andrew is an IT professional with a particular focus on web accessibility and assistive technology, a field that he has been working in for five years.
Andrew is an evangelist for accessibility being viewed as more than something just related to disability. He takes the view that most forms of technology could be classed as assistive technologies, in that they augment our capabilities as humans regardless of whether we have a disability or not.
Andrew's background has a technical focus, but he has spent many years working directly with assistive technology users, so he has a good appreciation of the challenges that people face and the ways in which technology and web accessibility can help to overcome these challenges.
Andrew's work at the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) involves advising and training blue-chip companies, Government Agencies and other small companies and charities about web accessibility and how to implement it.
Andrew's main area of interest now lies in the accessibility of script heavy interfaces including the use of JavaScript widgets, Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) and how the Web Accessibility Initiative - Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) specification can address the new challenges these techniques pose. He is also an active member of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG) working group.