Shawn Lawton Henry ("Shawn Henry") leads worldwide education and outreach activities promoting Web accessibility for people with disabilities at the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).
Shawn is WAI Outreach Coordinator, and Chair of the WAI Education and Outreach Working Group (EOWG). She holds a research appointment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). In these roles, Shawn:
- promotes awareness of Web accessibility issues;
- develops online materials to support understanding and implementing Web accessibility guidelines;
- provides presentations and training on accessible Web design and development;
- encourages cooperation among industry, researchers, educators, government, and people with disabilities to develop and implement consensus-based accessibility solutions.
Focus
Shawn focuses her personal passion for accessibility on bringing together the needs of individuals and the goals of organizations in designing human-computer interfaces. She developed uiAccess.com to share information on universal user interface design and "usable accessibility", and particularly enjoys introducing and encouraging accessible user experience, that is, how people with disabilities interact with technology.
Background
Prior to joining W3C in February, 2003, Shawn worked as a consultant with international standards bodies, research centers, government agencies, non-profit organizations, educational institutions, and Fortune 500 companies to develop and implement strategies to optimize design for usability and accessibility. In addition to volunteering as an invited expert in the WAI Education and Outreach Working Group, she served as Advisory Committee member for the Trace Research and Development Center, the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Access to Information Technology funded by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research; member of HFES/HCI 200, the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Technical Standards Committee developing software interface standards for the American National Standards Institute (ANSI); and contributor to International Organization for Standardization (ISO) work on accessibility standards.
Shawn has presented and published papers on accessibility and usability for Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES), Computer-Human Interaction (CHI), and Usability Professionals' Association (UPA) conferences, as well as Web design and development conferences. Her publications include:
- Accessibility books Just Ask: Integrating Accessibility Throughout Design (2007), Accessibility in the User-Centered Design Process (2004)
- "Understanding Web Accessibility" chapter in Web Accessibility: Web Standards and Regulatory Compliance (2006) and Constructing Accessible Web Sites (2002)
- "Everyone Interfaces" chapter in User Interfaces for All (2000)
- Online resources on Web accessibility.
Complete lists of publications, presentations, and more is available in About Shawn.
