Greetings/Introducing myself

My name is Richard Steinberg and I just joined the Education and Outreach group.

A little background on me. Originally from New York, I moved to Austin, Texas to attend the University of Texas where I earned a bachelor's in journalism. Soon after, I landed a job in state government where I began a series of writing jobs. When the web came about in the mid-1990s, I started my agency's first public website and I was hooked.

I've been involved in accessibility since 2006, which was an exciting year in Texas for accessibility. I had been a part-time, contributing editor to The Austin Chronicle for many years and in 2006 I wrote a story about how Yellow Cab of Austin was hiring dispatchers who were blind. In several Texas cities, Yellow Cab was working to make sure their software worked with JAWS. The story is at https://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2006-06-09/373276/

At the same time, my full-time job was managing web content at the state. A Texas law that mirrored the U.S. federal Section 508 was going into effect in September 2006 and all the state agencies including mine were going to have to address accessibility. Since I was responsible for posting the majority of the content, suddenly I had to start learning about accessibility and educating content creators. A few years later, web accessibility became my full-time job at another agency. It was there that I honed my craft. I was fortunate to be part of a group of web accessibility specialists who were my mentors. We held monthly training sessions for other government workers and eventually became part of a larger group that produced a series of training videos and materials at https://gov.texas.gov/organization/disabilities/accessibledocs

Eventually, I became accessibility coordinator at another agency and before I knew it I was eligible for retirement from state service. Not wanting to end this journey and because I was still too young to really "retire," I moved to Wells Fargo in 2017, where I was happy to join the accessibility team for the bank's division serving commercial customers.

My experiences in the government and at Wells Fargo have always led me to educating others about accessibility. I looking forward to contributing to the Education and Outreach group!
Richard Steinberg | Accessibility Associate, Accessible User Experience Team (AUx)
Customer Insights and Experience Design Team
Wells Fargo Digital Solutions for Business (DS4B) | Austin, TX
T 512.633.0453 | richard.steinberg@wellsfargo.com<mailto:richard.steinberg@wellsfargo.com>