About Us

Ron Rateau, founder of Get Accessible

My Journey Toward Digital Accessibility

Get Accessible is designed to be a space where experts in Digital Accessibility can stay up to date on the latest news and the changing ideas behind this fast-changing aspect of the digital world. Launching this community is the culmination of a dream that started in 2003, the first time that I ever ran across the phrase "Digital Accessibility."

While it's taken me years to launch this site, I hope our journey together is just starting. We want Get Accessible to grow and change. The shape it takes it going to be determined by you, our readers. The more input we get from you, the more this site can respond to your needs. We plan to add new features, new types of articles and, most important, new contributors, as the site goes forward.

Our Founder's Story

2003

First time I heard of Accessibility

2004

First time I used Assistive Technology

2005

- First time tasked to rebuild a website due to ADA lawsuit
- First time building with Accessibility in mind
- First time (and not the last) ‘Accessibility’ was downgraded from a ‘Must’ to ‘Nice to have’

2006

- First time addressing students with disabilities' technical needs
- First time created Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) for universities

2010

First time I heard of ‘Dear Colleague' letter by US Department of Education

2011

- I manually test a tech startup called Uber using screen reader
- Get Accessible concept started

2014

Built out Accessibility Plan for University of Cincinnati

2016

Trained hundreds of government employees from various agencies on Accessibility

2021

Continue to lead dev teams on addressing and fixing accessibility issues to meet WCAG compliance