I spent over 15 years watching people struggle with systems not built for them.

I started my career in healthcare, first as a caregiver, then as a physical therapist assistant primarily in home care. Almost every day, I saw what happened when a portal, form, or phone tree was designed unintuitively or for some imagined “average” user: people gave up, missed appointments, went without much-needed care, and worse, felt helpless or blamed themselves.

I later moved into digital accessibility, where my work has spanned research, usability, conformance, content, and mentorship. I’ve contributed to internal and external research projects, facilitated usability testing with diverse groups of people, including disabled participants, audited digital products and written conformance reports, adapted graphic novel illustrations for an audiobook, collaborated on learning modules and blog content, and mentored students whose shoes I was in only a few years earlier.

My healthcare background was foundational to my perspective. It’s why I often see accessibility findings not as lines in a spreadsheet, but as usability issues with real consequences for the person on the other side of the screen.

As someone who was late-identified as AuDHD (Autistic and ADHD) with central auditory processing disorder, I know from the inside what an interface can cost when it is too noisy, ambiguous, or impatient. Lived experience informs my way of thinking. It shapes what I notice, my pattern recognition and attention to detail, and my instinct to look beyond whether something technically works to whether it works well for the person using it.