Shawn Lawton Henry

Shawn Lawton Henry leads worldwide education and outreach promoting web accessibility for people with disabilities at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). She holds a research appointment at MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), a BSc in English with focus on technical writing and computer science, and an MSc in Digital Inclusion. Before joining the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), she developed and implemented strategies to optimize user interface design for usability and accessibility with Fortune 500 companies, nonprofit organizations, education providers, government agencies, international standards bodies, and research centers.

Shawn focuses her personal passion for accessibility on bringing together the needs of individuals and the goals of organizations in designing human-computer interfaces. Her TAdER Project provides research and outreach to better understand users' needs to customize text for readability — specifically, people with low vision, dyslexia, and related conditions that impact reading, including older people. Her book Just Ask: Integrating Accessibility Throughout Design provides an approach for developing products that are more usable for everyone. Shawn appreciates being in a position to offer these resources free online.