Glenn Dausch provides web accessibility testing and evaluation for TFA clients. He brings over twenty years of assistive technology knowledge to this role. As a life-long screen-reader user, he is uniquely positioned to help clients understand challenges faced by, and designs that are most accessible for, screen-reader users. He holds both the Web Accessibility Specialist (WAS) and Certified Professional in Accessibility Core Competencies (CPACC) certifications from the International Association of Accessibility Professionals, which enable him to not only speak to user experience but also advise on the technical aspects of accessible design. Glenn also draws on his experience in higher education administration and policy development as well as his previous role working with students with disabilities and working at a start-up which designed accessible reading tools. Glenn has presented at various conferences, including Association of Education and Rehabilitation for the Blind and Visually Impaired (AER), American Council of the Blind and CSUN’s California State University Northridge Assistive Technology Conference. He earned a B.A. from Dowling College.
When you need
The knowledge leader in accessibility
A team with a high level of technical expertise in accessibility
A team with a complete understanding of how people with disabilities can and should interact with your product or service
then TFA is the team you’re looking for.
Rick, plays several key roles for Tech for All (TFA), including managing the contractual and business aspects of its engagements and providing strategic support to its leadership and consulting teams. Rick leverages over 20 years of strategic consulting experience with senior management, primarily focused on accessibility matters, to support organizations seeking to pragmatically achieve and sustain ADA compliance across their websites, products, services, and internal IT systems.
For the past 17 years, seven as Executive Consultant for the American Foundation for the Blind’s (AFB) Consulting Group and ten with TFA, Rick has provided strategic consulting support to address the accessibility of digital products, applications and websites for users with disabilities. Strategic support is designed to help clients answer accessibility questions such as “Where do we stand?”, “What are our options?”, “Can you help us get it right?”, “How can we sustain accessibility?”
Before joining AFB and TFA, Rick enjoyed a highly successful, 20+ year career in publishing during the genesis and evolution of electronic/digital publishing. An industry pioneer, he became deeply engaged in industry efforts to realize the potential of digital publishing to expand access to content for students with visual impairments. In collaboration with the Association of American Publishers (AAP) and working with the AFB and CAST (a nonprofit education research and development organization that created the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework and UDL Guidelines, now used the world over to make learning more inclusive.), Rick participated in the National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard (NIMAS) initiative. The NIMAS initiative resulted in the formulation of the design and operating model for the highly successful AccessText Network (ATN), launched in 2009. Through ATN, 57 member publishers support over 3,000 post-secondary institutions by providing rapid access to over 750,000 digital files for use by students with disabilities; of these files, more than 50,000 are available for immediate download where previously it would have taken weeks.
From the early pre-internet days of electronic publishing, Rick has been fascinated by and engaged in efforts to realize the potential for digital technologies to remove barriers that limit opportunities for people with disabilities. He is motivated daily by the realization that each TFA engagement presents a chance to remove barriers and expand opportunities for individuals living with disabilities.
Rick holds a B.A. from Dartmouth College and an M.B.A. from Columbia Graduate School of Business (NYC).
Publications include:
(1) “An overview of content accessibility issues experienced by educational publishers,” Learned Publishing, 2018, Volume 31, pp 35-38
(2) “Accessibility Requirements take on New Significance for Publishers,” Publishing Research Quarterly, Fall 2005, Volume 21, Number 3
(3) “Chapter 7: Accessibility,” The Columbia Guide to Digital Publishing, Columbia University Press, 2003, pp 325-369
