Meet the team

Jon Gooday – Accessibility Development Manager

Jon Gooday is a senior consultant for AbilityNet’s web accessibility and usability team. Before joining AbilityNet, Jon was head of the Employers’ Forum on Disability’s web consultancy services. His focus is on providing clear, practical advice that organisations can use to improve the accessibility of their sites for their disabled customers and stakeholders.

Jon has broad experience of working with private, public and voluntary sector clients to enhance their websites’ accessibility and usability.

He has worked with many organisations to write and produce web accessibility guides, including:

• the ‘Sky web accessibility guide - good web design for disabled customers’ (Nov 2003)
• internal accessibility guidelines for companies such as Centrica, Scottish Mutual and Abbey
• ‘Accessible web design - a practical and strategic guide’, the Employers' Forum on Disability’s popular and concise introduction to web accessibility

Other highlights from Jon’s extensive experience include:

• delivering training on both strategic and practical web accessibility issues, including to 300 coders, designers and editors of bbc.co.uk
• creating accessible websites, including  the www.barrierfree-recruitment.com example accessible e-recruitment site developed with Macromedia and the Employers’ Forum on Disability
• many disabled user testing projects, involving moderating testers, analysing data and delivering reports to a range of corporate and public sector clients, including project managing the BBC’s ‘Accessibility help’

Jon’s ongoing projects include working on the PAS 78 advisory panel, delivering accessibility training to MSN, auditing a range of PwC web and software applications, working with BA to improve the accessibility of their software training packages and raising awareness of accessibility through speaking at a wide range of seminars and conferences across the UK.

Veronika Jermolina – Accessibility and Usability Consultant

Veronika’s employment with AbilityNet started with a research-based internship into accessibility of mobile devices undertaken as a part of her MSc in Business Systems Analysis and Design at City University London. Veronika has solid technical skills acquired while doing her BSc in Computing at Leeds University and later working as a technical consultant in the telecommunications industry. Being keen on mobile technologjes, Veronika believes that everyone has the right to benefit from the efficiencies that they bring about, pioneering this vision within the organisation.

After finishing the internship Veronika worked as a research assistant at the centre for HCI Design, City University, taking part in the teaching of the Inclusive Design module and working in a team of academics towards deliveries for a JISC project on innovative learning spaces. In her spare time Veronika has been working on disseminating findings of her MSc dissertation through podcasts, conferences, and possible journal publications.

Currently, Veronika is building on her academic knowledge of Human Computer Interaction and user-centred design techniques through projects involving usability and diverse user testing.

Meera Tank – Accessibility and Usability Consultant

After completing her degree in Business Computing (BSc), Meera pursued a career in web design and development and has a wide range of experience in front end web technologies working at several digital agencies before joining AbilityNet.

Being a standards advocate, she has a reputation for ensuring designs are coded to the highest web standards, with accessibility and usability always in mind. Her frontend development expertise includes work for Jersey Tourism, Times Online - Spelling Bee, MoD - Defence Dynamics, Ligne Roset and Nesta - iDiscover.

Meera also has a considerable amount of experience and personal interest with SEO and social media, she is an avid blogger and consistently conversing about the latest technologies in the industry and best web practices on Twitter

Robin Christopherson – Head of Accessibility Services

After a degree in Engineering at Cambridge and working as an IT instructor for the Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB), Robin was a founding member of AbilityNet in 1998. Robin now manages AbilityNet's Web Consultancy services – heading a team that is globally acclaimed as experts in accessibility auditing, disabled user testing and designing attractive websites that are both accessible and easy to use by all.

Despite being blind, Robin uses a computer very effectively by relying on speech output to access the full range of mainstream software including email and the internet. He has a first-hand appreciation of the importance of good web design practice to accessibility.

A member of the Guild of Accessible Web Designers, Robin's current projects include managing AbilityNet’s on-going ‘State of the eNation’ reports and the ‘See it Right: UseAbility’ logo, combining the popular RNIB See it Right (SiR) accreditation with disabled user testing.

Robin also has courtroom experience as an expert technical witness in the area of assistive technology and in software, systems and website accessibility. He also advises companies on their obligations under the DDA, SENDA and DED – including the evaluation of case specific reasonable adjustment.

Joe Chidzik – Accessibility and Usability Consultant

Joe is a  consultant in AbilityNet’s web accessibility and usability team. Previously Joe worked for seven years with the specialist communication software company, Widgit, and for two years in AbilityNet's advice and information team. With a background in user technical support, Joe is keenly aware of the range of difficulties facing both disabled and non-disabled computer users.

Joe is keen for the benefits of computers to be available to all, regardless of ability,  he’s particularly interested in IT’s role in entertainment and leisure and a firm believer in the idea of the internet as a level playing field.

He has advised learndirect centres on the accessibility and usability of their online courses and produced content for the AbilityNet 'My Computer My Way' and bbc.co.uk/accessibility websites. He enjoys learning about new technologies and is a strong advocate of server side scripting and accessible interactive web design.
Joe’s current work includes the Cabinet Office’s EU Benchmarking project, AbilityNet’s quarterly ‘State of the eNation’ reports and Ufi's 'My Guide' project.

Curt Holst – Webmaster/Accessibility and Usability Consultant

Webmaster, Curt, is also an accessibility and usability consultant. Before joining AbilityNet he worked as a web developer/designer in the web application development sector using human-computer interaction (HCI) and accessibility technologies. He has over seven years experience developing  web applications using web, server and database technologies. Curt is passionate about accessible user-interface design and constantly aims to develop his extensive knowledge of website accessibility issues.

Curt’s work at AbilityNet has included:

• delivering training on both strategic and practical web accessibility issues to organisations such as The Co-operative Bank, HSBC and a number of universities, colleges and corporate firms
• developing accessible sites, such as www.abilitynet.org.uk and www.discnwl.org.uk

His current projects include:

• creating bbc.co.uk/accessibility
• creating gateway2at.eu, a Europe-wide information gateway for disabled further education  students and lecturers
• designing sites for the voluntary sector