a more formal introduction

Hello all,

 

As the new-commer to the group, I thought it would be nice to provide a more formal introduction.

 

I was blinded at the age of 8-years old, and was mainstreamed into public education in the sixth grade.  I graduated from the University of Arizona (Tucson) in 1983 with a b.s. in management information systems.  I have worked at several companies ranging from very tiny (under 10 employees) to very large (over 75,000 employees).

 

In October of 2000, I joined Oracle corporation as their first accessibility specialist.  I was brought in to help train management, development and QA on what accessibility means and how to implement it.  I was the "JAWS" expert, and helped oracle establish standards for what is and is not accessible for both web and java-based applications.  I have worked in a number of different departments within Oracle, but for the past 3+ years, I have been in the JDeveloper QA department.  Recently, I have been designated the Accessibility QA Lead for the JDeveloper IDE, and as such am responsible for coordinating our accessibility testing of this development environment.

 

Several weeks ago the head of Oracle's accessibility program office approached me with the idea of taking Amy Chen's place on this taskforce, and both my manager and I agreed that it seemed like a good fit.

 

I work from home in Tucson Arizona where this weekend I will *NOT* be curling up in front of a fire since it is in the 70's here J