Aaron Leventhal Email & Phone Number

Mountain View, Ca, Us

Google Chrome accessibility development

Through a simple, discoverable interface, we have provided the benefit of accessibility tools to an audience 100x larger than industry norms.· Product Manager, Front-end Architect, and subject-matter expert for Sitecues, a simple, powerful accessibility tool embedded into websites. Sitecues provides value for businesses by making their sites more usable. The revenue model is SaaS/subscription.· Designed self-explanatory, discoverable UI features to help users on the web who struggle to read print and who do not own assistive technology. These users include millions of baby boomers and seniors with sensory deterioration, people with learning disabilities such as dyslexia, non-native speakers and individuals with low literacy. While these market segments comprise a significant portion of the population, they do not garner commensurate attention from designers.· Utilized universal, user-centered design and usability studies to build and improve UI.· Architected and engineered prototypes, and most front-end features. The technical challenges were enormous given the need to run on the top of any web content, in any browser.· Developed metrics and A/B testing infrastructure, including mapreduce and html graphical viewer. Used these systems to gain usability insights and provide data for sales, marketing and customers. First assistive technology to be polished through metrics and A/B testing.· Provided in-person customer education for large accounts and at conferences.· Developed collaborative roadmap with input from stakeholders, customers, users and sales team. · Led sales engineers, graphic designers and implementers.· Invented new features and software techniques, drafted patent specifications, managed patent portfolio.

· Personal accessibility consulting firm specializing in web accessibility, open source and innovative solutions. · Provided Google Chrome browser team with expertise on accessibility standards and implementation.

Waterloo, Ontario, Ca

· Analyzed user needs through usability testing, surveys, research and subject matter expertise.· Analyzed business needs through research of legal requirements, competitive platforms, product roadmaps and product requirements.· Developed roadmaps and requirements for web browsers, content, developer tools, sync software.· Drove accessibility requirements and roadmaps, influencing managers of individual products to address the needs of users with disabilities.· Educated developers, designers, managers and peers on their role in supporting accessibility.· Provided expertise on a wide range of topics, such as WCAG conformance, browsers and APIs.

Web 2.0 Platforms · Front and back end developer for DotSpots and Gripe, advanced web applications with a heavy utilization of AJAX and dynamic content. · Utilized fast-paced Agile development process with continuous deployment -- all changes went live immediately after passing unit tests.

Armonk, New York, Ny, Us

My role at IBM marks one of the most successful periods of my career. Our small team had the goal of modernizing web accessibility. This was complex effort involving many organizations, standards efforts and code bases. It continues to have a huge impact in the world of accessibility.High level view:· Spearheaded implementation and adoption of WAI-ARIA, enabling accessibility on the modern web. Without WAI-ARIA, web content must be static to be accessible.· The entire strategy was open, and the technology has been made free and open. It’s now integrated with HTML and is used on most major websites. Specific things that I drove at IBM:· Firefox accessibility implementation, fixing over 1000 bugs in Firefox.· Key improvements to accessibility standards: WAI-ARIA, ATK/AT-SPI and IA2· Development of an open accessibility community.· Mozilla Accessibility grant program that brought funding and open source developers together to architect many necessary pieces, including platform infrastructure, tooling, assistive technologies, JS libraries and documentation. · Funding for the open source NVDA screen reader, which has been a major boost for the web. It received most of its first 5 years of funding through this program.· Standards, developer documentation, evangelism, community development, panel participation, articles and public speaking engagements.

· Internal review called accessibility the "best run project at Netscape."· A core contributor to disparate domains including focus, navigation, DOM, events, AccessibilityAPI support, browser UI, layout, widgets and forms.· Designed and developed Find As You Type: The Washington Post called it the "best addition toMozilla" ... eWeek said, "coolest new feature."· Participant in industry working groups W3C UAAG and ATIA/ITI.

· Designed, architected and developed MegaDots, a professional Braille publishing tool for teachers, Braille transcribers and people with visual impairments. MegaDots was first sold in 1991 and is still sold today. Innovations included OCR-optimized spell checking, Braille as a view (not translation), math support, auto document structuring and advanced formatting. · Represented company in overseas relationships and contract negotiations.