Leadership and Management
The Board of Directors
The Board of directors serves the membership.
Board members serve three year terms and are elected by the membership. People with disabilities must comprise at least 50% of the Board.
The current Board began serving July 1, 2023.
The Executive Director
The Executive Director is a non-voting ex officio member of the Board of Directors, contracted by the Board.
Meeting Minutes | Annual Reports
Board Chair
Douglas George Towne,
Chair and CEO, Access Ready, Inc.
Douglas George Towne began his life as an advocate for people with disabilities at age thirteen while attending the New York State School for the Blind at Batavia. As a member of the Student Council and Editor and Chief of the school paper he successfully led several actions designed to improve the life of the students. His lifelong advocacy efforts garnered him the prestigious Statewide Advocate of the Year for 2002 from the Florida Independent Living Council and recognition from Congress as well.
Transferring from the school for the blind he became one of the first blind students to graduate from public school under the new law in 1976, going on to study history and journalism at the State University of New York. His continuing education has yielded several professional licenses and designations throughout his progressive career.
In 2001 he founded Disability Relations Group (DRG) to return to his first love of advocacy and public policy in the disability arena. As Chairman of DRG and its chief consultant, for 17 years he spent a great deal of time writing and has penned a number of policy works and many social enterprise plans. His social enterprise work has come as the result of his certification by the State of Florida as a Certified Business Technical Assistance Consultant (CBTAC).
Throughout his career he has spoken to groups both large and small from local civic clubs in the majority of the state capitols and before members of Congress in Washington.
His motivational style has excited sales forces and his Biblical approach to disability has fascinated congregations. He has been a guest on numerous television and radio shows and quoted in publications around the world.
This lead directly to the creation of Access Ready Inc. as a nonprofit, cross disability advocacy organization with a concentration on accessible information and communications technologies.
Board First Vice-Chair
Pina D’Intino,
Founder, Aequum Global Access
By establishing a robust strategic influence in organizational accessibility, Pina is a sought-out consultant and speaker, internationally, that actively promotes accessibility and inclusion from both an executive and a grassroots perspective.
Pina has more than 29 years of experience in a large global financial institution, while for the last 15 years has pioneered and founded a cross-institutional hub for accessibility and inclusion.
By way of creating awareness; building accessibility business cases; incubating accessibility at the onset of projects, initial designs & software development; and establishing IT accessibility standards, strategies, roadmaps & solutions – Pina bridges the dynamics of organization, employee, and customer viewpoints, and needs, in order to establish a best-practices environment.
Pina was the Founder and co-Chair of the Canadian Financial Institute on Assistive Technologies (CFIAT); is a Board Member of the International Association of Accessibility Professionals (IAAP); active member of Job Opportunity Information Network (JOIN), Honorary Chair of Financial Services for G3ict, and Advisor on a number of AODA reviews and initiatives. She is a certified PMI member, and holds a Master’s Degree in Design in Inclusive Design (MDes) from OCADU.
In 2013, Pina received the QE2 Diamond Jubilee medal by Canada’s Lt. Governor the Honourable David Onley, for her work in accessibility in employment.
Board Second Vice-Chair
Chad Lamb,
Section 508 Subject Matter Expert, New Editions Consulting, Inc.
Chad Lamb has worked for the last 16 years in accessibility compliance, supporting the Department of Homeland Security, Treasury, Department of Labor, Health and Human Services, and the Federal Communications Commission. He provides testing support for all Information and Communications Technology (documents, web, software, and mobile). Chad provides consulting services to many of these agencies as a SME for project managers and developers. He has led and created accessibility training, and at DHS was part of the team that created the first version of the Trusted Tester process for Web Applications.
Board Treasurer
Annie Heckel,
Manager of Web Accessibility Services, Cornell University
Annie Heckel is currently the Manager of Web Accessibility Services at Cornell University, a position that brings together her two past paths of accessibility and higher education. She began her career as a professor and instructional designer focusing on composition and English literature, where accessibility was a significant but still secondary aspect of building courses for asynchronous online education.
In 2019, she left teaching for a position as an accessibility auditor with the accessibility services company Online ADA (now ABILITY), but came back to higher education in 2022 when she began her current position. Annie is deeply invested in improving accessibility not only in education, but in all aspects of life.
Board Secretary
Dr. Joan Ehrlich,
Outreach Specialist, Northern Virginia Resource Center for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Persons (NVRC)
Dr. Joan Ehrlich joined the the NVRC staff part-time in June, 2021. As the Outreach Specialist, her role is to explain to consumers of all ages the impact of living with hearing loss, how to recognize it in oneself and in family and friends, and how to manage it.
This is accomplished through presentations, fact sheets and online resources, one-on-one conversations and free hearing screenings.
Joan’s expertise is in helping consumers understand their rights under the American Disabilities Act while helping covered entities understand their obligation under the law.
Membership Lead
Karl Groves,
Chrief Innovation Officer, Level Access
An unstoppable force for change and thought-leader in an industry regarded for saying “No”, Karl Groves would rather lead by example in saying “Yes, and here’s how”. He seeks to offer solutions to complex problems relating to universal usability. Karl believes that together we can meet both our goals: your business goals and his goals to lead the way in accessible user experiences.
Karl has over two decades experience in doing IT consulting for the biggest companies in the world and biggest agencies in the U.S. government. Widely regarded as a pragmatic solution-finder, his work is cited in nearly a dozen books and used on curricula in Human-Computer Interaction across the globe.
He leads by doing, teaches from experience, and succeeds by facilitating others success. When others say, “That can’t be done’, Karl shows them how.
Executive Director
Dr. Chris M. Law,
Accessibility Track
Chris Law is known for being an innovator in the development and sharing of information to support members of the accessibility testing and related technology fields. He is the co-creator and chair of the annual ICT Accessibility Testing Symposium, and the creator and chair of the annual Digital Accessibility Legal Summit (DALS).
Chris has previously sat on accessibility technology standards and guidelines development committees in Canada, the UK and the US.
He has published research papers of surveys conducted on developers of accessibility standards, together with user testing and heuristic analysis of those standards.
He is the lead author on guidelines for organizational adoption of accessibility for the Accessibility Switchboard project at the National Federation of the Blind (NFB).
Founding Board Members
We thank our five founding board members who were appointed to serve the first year of operation, through to the end of June, 2023:
- Chair – Douglas George Towne
- First Vice-Chair – Kara Pernice
- Second Vice-Chair – Pina D’Intino
- Treasurer – Annie Heckel
- Secretary – Dr. Joan Ehrlich
Board Meeting Minutes
Board of Directors Meeting Minutes are posted here after they are approved for posting by the Board, which usually happens at the subsequent meeting. Minutes are posted most recent first.
Second Year: 2023-24
Inaugural Year: 2022-23
Board Meeting Minutes for the inaugural fiscal year to June 30, 2023.