Female technology leaders: International Women’s Day 2020

On International Women’s Day (March 8) we celebrate inspiring female leaders in web accessibility and digital inclusion. 

A picture from International Women's Day 2020. Caption reads An Equal World is an Enabled WorldIt’s particularly apt given this year’s theme is “an equal world, is an empowered world,” resonating with our mission of a digital world accessible to all. 

When it comes to accessibility, there’s a trend towards women leading the way.

A survey by WebAIM (2018) found that the number of women in the field accounted for 39.5 per cent of respondents were women, five times the number in the broader accessibility field where women comprise 6.9%.

The figures also show a reasonable representation of those self-reporting with disabilities, as might be expected. The percentage of respondents with disabilities increased to 26.4% in this survey from 21.8% in 2014. 

Inspiring women featured centre stage at AbilityNet’s 2019 TechShare Pro, and this is reflected in the list. We have listed them alphabetically, as they’re all fantastic. It’s by no means an exhaustive list. Let us know who inspires you, @AbilityNet. 

See our list of Inspiring Women for International Women’s Day 2019

Caroline Casey, Valuable 500

A picture of Caroline Casey smiling, she has a black topCaroline Casey is an award-winning social entrepreneur. Committed to building a global movement on inclusive business for the 1.3 billion people in the world with a disability.

Over the past two decades, she has set up several organisations and initiatives centred on disability business inclusion.

Her latest initiative, The Valuable 500, is an ambitious year-long campaign to get 500 businesses to commit to putting disability inclusion on their leadership agendas.


Dr Sue Black OBE, social entrepreneur

Dr Black received a Special Award at Tech4Good 2019. Sue was awarded an OBE for “services to technology” in the 2016 Queen’s New Year’s Honours list. She is now a UK government advisor, thought leader, Honorary Professor of Computer Science at UCL, social entrepreneur, writer and public speaker. Her current social enterprise #techmums is changing lives. #techmums teaches mums tech skills and builds their confidence encouraging them into education, entrepreneurship and employment.

She achieved a degree and a PhD while bringing up her children on her own.

She also founded a high-profile campaign to save Bletchley Park.

Jessie Link, Twitter

A screenshot of Link's Twitter account, which has a cartoon icon and a manga-style headerJessie is a Director of Engineering at Twitter. She currently heads up the engineering team based in Twitter’s London office, where she oversees a variety of teams working on projects like TweetDeck and Twitter Live.

Jessie is passionate about building diverse teams with a happy and inclusive culture.

She’s head of video engineering, responsible for leading a team of engineers building the tech behind live videos, Periscope, and video-on-demand.


Link has also lent her skills to a few projects teaching coding to girls, including hosting Code First sessions. Code First is a not for profit social enterprise and has delivered £6 million worth of free education to young women across the UK. Its mission is to increase the number of women in tech.

Haben Girma, accessibility and inclusion advisor for Lenovo

Haben Girma on stage at TechShare Pro 2019Haben Girma is the first Accessibility and Inclusion Advisor for Lenovo, as well as the first deafblind graduate of Harvard Law School.

Haben is an inspiring woman in her own right but is also an advocate for companies embracing diversity in terms of employing people with disabilities as she told delegates as 2019’s TechShare Pro.

She’s working with Lenovo to “help it develop more accessible, smarter technology products for all, creating greater awareness for the disabled community and helping promote a more inclusive society.”

Jessica Fisher, Digit Music

Digit Music was the Winner of the Tech4Good Accessibility Award 2019 and also put on a show-stopping performance at the TechShare Pro Gala Dinner.

Founder Si Tew created the Control One, which is similar in design to an electronic wheelchair controller, however, sends digital data to interact with music software, rather than to control movement.

Jessica is one of the students who use the Control One to create music.

Margaux Joffe and Sam Soloway, Verizon Media

A screenshot of Joffe's Twitter accountThe company behind Yahoo, AOL, HuffPost, TechCrunch, and MAKERS has women leading the charge when it comes to embracing digital accessibility and inclusion.

Margaux Joffe is its award-winning producer and Director of Accessibility & Inclusion.

In 2018, she spearheaded The Disability Collection, a landmark partnership between Verizon Media, The National Disability Leadership Alliance and Getty Images to change the representation of people with disabilities in the media.

Margaux also founded Verizon Media’s Neurodiversity Employee Resource Group, a group dedicated to empowering “minds of all kinds,” and a first of its kind in any Fortune 500 company.

Before joining Verizon Media, Margaux launched an online platform for adult women with ADHD called “Kaleidoscope Society,” quickly earning press coverage in Teen Vogue, VICE and Bustle and was presented at the International Conference on ADHD.

Margaux was diagnosed with ADHD when she was age 29.

Sam Soloway, is Verizon’s accessibility lab manager. She gave an inspiring talk at TechShare Pro 2019 when she shared the company’s attitude and how it works with staff to be accessible for its users and audiences.  

Sam explained how a tour of Verizon’s accessibility labs is part of new starter’s first experience of Verizon. Read Sam’s Guest Blog about who inspired her at TechShare Pro 2019.

How AbilityNet can help create a Digital World Accessible to all