I've worked inside the independent living movement from two sides: on the board, and running it. The Center for Independent Living in Berkeley is a founding organization of that movement, and I sat on its board before I ran it.

I served on its Board of Directors from January 2018 to August 2023, on the finance subcommittee, then Executive Director from August 2023 to May 2024, leading more than 35 staff and owning strategy, finances, programs and partnerships.

From January 2015 to August 2018, I also chaired Alameda County's Public Authority for In-Home Supportive Services. It's a sworn-in county position, and the job was advising and advocating on what affects disabled and elderly people in the county.

I also spent August 2021 to April 2022 as an Accessibility Researcher with Google's Central Accessibility team. That was a stretch outside the movement's own institutions, and it fed back into them. Different building, same work.

Ownership is the argument

The interesting question about a wheelchair isn't technical. It's who owns it. When a single vendor owns a wheelchair's software, that company can end support for the thing somebody uses to leave their house, and the user has no standing to object. That's why I co-founded ATDev in May 2020, why I'm still there, and why it belongs on this page as well as the assistive technology one. Building ATOS as an open platform under independent governance is the version where the user has standing.

The independent living movement has made this argument since the 1970s. I'm applying it to firmware. Disabled people should direct the technology built for them, and depending on a product shouldn't mean depending on a company's continued interest.

Tools built with organizations, not for them

The organizations already know the problem. I bring the code. coverage-compass is a privacy-local web app, written in TypeScript, built with the Colorado Cross-Disability Coalition to help disabled Coloradans navigate Colorado Medicaid work requirements and appeals.

cdass-enroll is work related to CDASS, Colorado's Consumer Directed Attendant Support Services, the program through which disabled people direct their own attendant care. Self-direction is the point of the program.

I also contribute to Dasher, a long-lived open-source text-entry system for people who can't use a keyboard. It has a formal governance document. For a project people depend on rather than just enjoy, that's the feature that counts.