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Shawn Lawton Henry

Director, Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

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 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, which is available free online, provides a user-centered accessibility approach for developing products that are more usable for everyone.

Shawn is Director of the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) that develops strategies, standards, and resources to make digital content and technology accessible to people with disabilities. She initially joined W3C in 2003 to lead worldwide accessibility education and outreach, and to bring user experience design to new WAI accessibility resources.

Before joining W3C, Shawn developed and implemented strategies to optimize user interface design for usability and accessibility as a consultant to Fortune 500 companies, education providers, government agencies, non-profits/NGOs, international standards bodies, and research centers.

Shawn holds a Bachelor of Science in English with a focus on technical writing and computer science, and a Master of Science with Distinction in Digital Inclusion. When not typing on her little laptop, she is often out paddling her long sea kayak.

Classes

John Slatin AccessU 2026