Accessibility in Publishing (Resorces)

Accessibility in Publishing: Stakeholders and Impact Sean Concannon, Atypon, Simon Holt, Elsevier, Kyle Keane, University of Bristol, and Jennifer Kemp, Strategies for Open Science (Stratos)

Around the halfway point between the EAA and ADA II requirements, this panel considers a multi-stakeholder point of view on the process of planning for, implementing and evaluating accessibility as an ongoing and proactive program. Combining user, publisher, consultant and content hosting perspectives, attendees can expect to understand what roles staff and leadership play in supporting product and program needs for different accessibility use cases, as well as considerations of accessibility and its impact in open scholarship.

Sean Concannon has worked at the intersection of technology and publishing for over two decades. As Senior Manager of Solution Architecture for the Atypon Experience Platform at Wiley Partner Solutions, he has led transformative migration projects for major scholarly publishers, including The Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, The American Society for Civil Engineering, and Canadian Science Publishing. Sean's expertise in content accessibility, platform architecture, and web standards has driven significant improvements in publisher workflows, reducing onboarding time while enhancing user experience. Sean combines strategic vision with hands-on technical expertise to advance accessibility and digital transformation in scholarly publishing.

Simon Holt is Head of Content Accessibility at Elsevier. He has worked in Scholarly Communications for over 15 years, working across books and journals. He is an advocate for disability inclusion and accessible publishing in the scholarly communications industry and is a current SSP Board Member. He lives in Oxford, UK.

Dr. Kyle Keane is Senior Lecturer in Assistive Technologies in the School of Computer Science at the University of Bristol (UK), where he leads research at the intersection of artificial intelligence, human cognition, and assistive technology design. Inspired to compensate for his early-onset blindness from a degenerative retinal condition, Kyle’s dynamically changing visual impairment provides unique insight, perspective, and motivation to investigate the limits and potential for humans to interpret meaningful information from interactive technologies.

Jennifer Kemp is Director of Consulting Services at Stratos (Strategies for Open Science) where she works with research funders, libraries, publishers and initiatives on their open scholarship and organizational goals. She is also a Research Affiliate with Invest in Open Infrastructure (IOI). Previously, she was most recently Head of Partnerships at Crossref. Jennifer started her career as a librarian before joining HighWire Press and then going on to policy, marketing and product roles at Springer Nature. She is active in the scholarly communications community and is Chair of the Board of Trustees for the Open Access eBook Usage (OAeBU) Data Trust.