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Léonie is Founder and Director of TetraLogical; a member of the W3C Board of Directors, and co-Chair of the W3C Web Applications Working Group. She's also co-organiser of the Inclusive Design 24 (#id24) conference; and co-author of the Inclusive Design Principles and the Do No Harm Guide: Centering accessibility in data visualization.
Léonie began using the internet in the early 90s, turned it into a web design career in 1997, and (despite losing her eyesight along the way) has been enjoying herself thoroughly ever since.
Throughout a career that has spanned more than 25 years, Léonie has achieved several notable milestones including delivering the first United Nations (UN) global web accessibility audit, launched at the same time as the UN Charter on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, being part of the original team that created the award winning GOV.UK platform, and being recognised as one of the first Microsoft Most Valued Professionals (MVP)outside of the Microsoft community.
Léonie is often found at conferences, talking about web standards, accessibility mechanics, and pushing the boundaries of inclusive design(with existing technologies like SVG, HTML, ARIA, and JavaScript, as well as new technologies like AI and WebVR). She has also written about these things for Smashing magazine, SitePoint.com, and Net magazine, as well as on her own site Tink.UK.
Léonie also writes and talks about the experience of losing her sight, offering a powerful insight into an event in her life that changed everything.
In her spare time, Léonie likes reading, cooking, drinking tequila, and dancing (although not necessarily in that order)!
I lost my sight over the course of 12 months from late 1999 to late 2000. It was mostly my fault that it happened. This is an account of an event in my life that changed everything.
It's also an account of everything that came after. How the web and technology were lights in the darkness, how I learned that having a disability doesn't need to slow you down, and it's also an attempt to answer the one unanswerable question - would I have my sight back if I could?
Speaking topics
* Lived experience/losing sight
* Using a screen reader (software used by blind people to access
phones/laptops)
* Web accessibility/accessibility of emerging technologies
I lost my sight over the course of 12 months from late 1999 to late 2000. It was mostly my fault that it happened. This is an account of an event in my life that changed everything.
It's also an account of everything that came after. How the web and technology were lights in the darkness, how I learned that having a disability doesn't need to slow you down, and it's also an attempt to answer the one unanswerable question - would I have my sight back if I could?
