Andrew's background

Hello,

Some of my background as the rest of you have been so good at providing
your own:

I live and work in Melbourne, Australia where I manage the web
accessibility consulting team (3.5 people) for NILS (the National
Information and Library Service - we were previously with Vision Australia
Foundation, but moved when Vision's library was incorporated into NILS in
the middle of this year). While we are based in Melbourne, we actually work
across the country with significant consulting coming from the federal
government in Canberra and a few large clients from Sydney. We also run web
accessibility workshops in (nearly) all capital cities.

My background in agriculture gave me my interest in accessibility as
Australian farmers often have very poor communications infrastructure and
need sites that are fast, easy to user and work with the images-off.

* Potted history:
- web accessibility consultant with Vision Australia (now NILS) since early
2001
- private web consultant since mid 1998 (information architecture,
usability, accessibility, project assessment)
- web services manager, Department Natural Resources and Environment since
mid '90s
- natural resource economist and then manager statistical information
services with Department of Agriculture since mid '80s
- several research stints at La Trobe University while working on Masters
and PhD programs
- soil conservation officer in Victoria and regional agricultural economist
in NSW

* EOWG history:
- member since March 2001
- principal author on Auxiliary Benefits document
- major contributor/writer on sections of the Business Case documents
- regular teleconference participant [even though it is 11:30pm Friday to
1:30am Saturday during summer :-( ]
- get to one face-to-face meeting a year due to cost of travel from
Australia

* Web background:
- developed first intranet in Victorian state government
- developed first thematic web site (cf org-chart based) public web site
for a government department in 1996 - themes were based on how the public
saw the services that the department provided and survived several look and
feel iterations until a government restructure last year.
- developed UCD based intranet for the Department of Human Services in 2000
(presented a paper on this at Online and Ondisc 2001
<http://conferences.alia.org.au/online2001/>)
- developed information architecture for the Productivity Commission and
project managed their redevelopment in 2000
- consulting with Vision Australia on accessibility and providing practical
solutions to accessibility issues without compromising usability and design
since 2001
- regularly presenting talks and workshops on accessibility around
Australia

* Photo if you want:
- http://ausweb.scu.edu.au/aw03/conf/keynotes.html#keynote2

_________________________________
Dr Andrew Arch
Manager Online Accessibility Consulting, National Information & Library
Service
Ph 613 9864 9222; Fax 613 9864 9210; Mobile 0438 755 565
http://www.nils.org.au/ | http://www.it-test.com.au/ |
http://www.dc-anz.org/

Member, Education & Outreach Working Group,
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative
http://www.w3.org/WAI/EO/

NILS - A Joint Venture between the
Royal Victorian Institute for the Blind, The Royal Blind Society of NSW,
and Vision Australia Foundation.

Received on Thursday, 2 October 2003 23:08:37 UTC