Meet the team

Meera Pankhania – Head of Accessibility

Meera heads AbilityNet’s world-renowned web accessibility and usability team, providing strategic direction and business development. Before joining AbilityNet Meera pursued a career in web design/development and information architecture and has a wide range of experience in front end web technologies working at several digital agencies.

Being a standards advocate, she has a reputation for ensuring designs are coded to the highest web standards, with accessibility and usability always in mind. Meera has worked with a wide range of organisations such as HSBC, BAA and BT and by providing consultancy throughout a project lifecycle.

Meera also has a considerable amount of experience in SEO and social media, where she consistently converses about the latest technologies in the industry and best web practices on Twitter.

Outside of her professional environment, Meera enjoys travelling and photography and also participates in 5-a-side football and badminton.

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Rhiannon Thomas – Accessibility and Usability Consultant

Rhiannon studied Anthropology at the University of Sussex before moving into the world of usability and accessibility. Her degree was primarily ethnographic and human rights based, which strengthened her interest in observing and understanding people and their interactions. She has always been keen to work in the not-for-profit sector and has volunteered for several charities.

After graduating she worked as a user experience researcher at a digital design and research agency which enabled her to develop strong usability knowledge and skills. She then worked as a freelance user experience designer at a digital strategy agency focusing on design, before joining AbilityNet.

Rhiannon is interested in diverse user testing and accessibility and is strengthening her understanding of the field. She enjoys connecting her background in studying people to accessibility and is looking forward to developing her knowledge.

Robin Christopherson – Head of Digital Inclusion

After Cambridge University Robin worked as an IT instructor for the Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB) and became a founding member of AbilityNet in 1998 after which he founded the team now globally acclaimed as experts in accessibility auditing, disabled user testing and designing attractive websites that are both accessible and easy to use by all.

Despite being blind, Robin uses technology very effectively using speech output to access computers, the internet, his iPhone and many other technologies to assist him in his work. He has a first-hand appreciation of the importance of good web design practice to accessibility.

Robin also has courtroom experience as an expert technical witness in the area of assistive technology and in software, systems and website accessibility. He also advises companies on their obligations under the Equality Act and the Disability Equality Duty – including the evaluation of case specific reasonable adjustment.

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Joe Chidzik – Senior Accessibility and Usability Consultant

Joe has been with the Accessibility Services team for 6 years and has worked with such diverse organisations as Microsoft, the NHS, HSBC, the BBC and The FA. Previously Joe worked for seven years with the specialist communication software company, Widgit, and for two years in AbilityNet's advice and information team. With a background in user technical support, Joe is well aware of the range of difficulties facing both disabled and non-disabled computer users.

He is keen on getting accessibility considered throughout the design process and frequently advises in areas from initial wireframe reviews through to design mockups and code reviews. This is a key consideration of an inclusive design approach, which involves getting accessibility considered at every stage of a design process.

He particularly enjoys finding answers to specific issues and getting hands on with coding, ensuring that solutions follow a progressive enhancement methodology and are semantically sound.

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Gregory Mumford – Accessibility and Usability Consultant

Gregory previously worked for 10 years in IT Support for two publishing companies before joining AbilityNet in 2008 as Training and Quality Materials Coordinator as part of the Sustaining Switched On Communities Project and also worked on the Access Materials Project before moving over to work with the Accessibility Team.

He has produced content for the My Computer My Way and BBC My Web My Way websites and worked on tagging PDF content for several major clients.

Outside of work he is a member of his local Fencing Club and is on the club committee as Team and Weapons Captain.

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Stefan Sollinger – Accessibility and Usability Consultant

Stefan has many years of experience within the ICT Accessibility field. He first got involved in this field whilst studying at the University of Linz, Austria, where he was working on several projects for the IIS (Institute for Integrated Studies) at the Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria.

After moving to the UK he worked over 10 years for Dolphin Computer Access in various roles, including as Access Product Engineer and Leader of the Product Design Team. During this time he was gaining first-rate knowledge of Assistive Technology and practical experience of the issues disabled people face when using computers, phones and the Internet.

Curt Holst – Senior Accessibility and Usability Consultant

Before joining AbilityNet he worked as a web developer/designer in the web application development sector using human-computer interaction (HCI) and accessibility technologies. He has a Master's Degree (MSc) in Interaction Design from the University of Central Lancashire.

Curt has been with the Accessibility Services team for 9 years and has worked with such diverse organisations as HSE, BAA, Lloyds, Microsoft, the NHS, HSBC, the BBC and The FA delivering training and consultancy on both strategic and practical web accessibility issues. Curt is passionate about accessible user-interface design and particularly enjoys seeing highly innovative interface design that is also accessible and helping organisations achieve this in a pragmatic way.

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