Steve Lee

Exeter, UK | +44 7724 150165 | steve@opendirective.com | @SteveALee | opendirective.com

Professional Profile

A seasoned developer consultant with wide expertise including in accessibility, assistive technology, music technology, open development, modern web, mobile and cloud technologies. My personal mission is to enhance technology experiences for all, through development, training, guidance and support in accessibility, cloud, standards and collaborative development. I have a particular interest in developer tools, cognitive accessibility and music learning technology and am also experienced in domains which include: FE/HE education MIS systems, financial products, development process tools and mobile communication systems. I'm a keen team player who thrives in a user/developer facing role solving real-world problems using my technical, creative, interpersonal and analytical skills.

Key Experience

· InterAccess team member providing accessibility audit and related services to notable Irish clients.

· Founder of OpenDirective Ltd. providing development and consultancy services, accessibility guidance, assistive technology, music technology and open development. Currently, we're exploring music learning tools and managing the open Mulberry AAC Symbols.

· Contracted staff at W3C WAI working in an editorial capacity on the Cognitive Accessibility publications and W3C WAI website DevOps. Excellent relationships with key people in the accessibility and Assistive Technology communities. Member of AAATE

· Consortium member of large FP7 EU accessibility projects, Cloud4All and Prosperity4All, that are developing Global Public Inclusive Infrastructure (GPII) including automatic personalisation of devices. Developing web components for people with cognitive disabilities and low digital literacy.

· Organiser of technical accessibility events including the ATSummit and A11yHack days. Actively involved in key accessibility events such as CSUN, ICCHP and AAATE.

· Launched several open accessibility innovation community sites designed to encourage end users and developers to collaborate. Created PowerTalk to narrate PowerPoint presentations.

· Board member of Project:Possibility a US and EU non-profit with a mission to enthuse students to create innovative open source accessibility projects though competitions.

· Adviser on open source development for academic funded research projects at OSS Watch (Oxford University). Developed an "Openness Rating" to evaluate project maturity.

· Developer with wide experience in technologies and domains with full product and project lifecyle experience. Successes include: maintaining complex n-tier commercial website, developed an accessibility supplier database for an Arabic service provider, dramatically improving FE college MIS with intranet, tax software including Inland Revenue on-line filing, UK features for Microsoft Money, live stocks feed for MSN (seconded to Microsoft in Redmond), mission critical mobile data systems.

· Provider of first class customer support, liaising with users, customers, development team and product support team to solve individual problems and eliminate re-occurring issues.

· Author and presenter on technical aspects of accessibility for selected articles, blogs and events.

· BSc in Electrical and Electronic Engineering.

Expert Technical Knowledge

· Web and accessibility standards and applications to meet user preferences - WAI, WCAG, ARIA, assistive technologies.

· Software development processes and tools including Continuous Integration and Deployment on embedded, systems, web,

· Internet/web full stack development vanilla, frameworks, cloud architectures, Serverless, n-tier, declarative/functional/imperative/reactive.

· Database design and development, Relational and NoSQL - MySQL, SQLServer and Oracle . Data warehousing.

· Communication protocols, OAuth & OpenID, TCP/IP and other internet, financial, bespoke mobile data, telecoms etc.

· Programming languages HTML/CSS/JavaScript/TypeScript, C/C++, C#, VB, Python, assembler and more.

Career Summary

· Jun 2022 - current Accessibility services InterAccess

· Jun 2019 - current Website dev and editorial W3C WAI Staff

· Jun 2011 - current Founder OpenDirective Ltd.

· Jan 2009 - Jun 2011 Community development officer OSS Watch.

· Feb 2007 - Jun 2011 Freelance Developer Sole Trader

· Nov 2004 - Feb 2007 MIS Programmer Exeter Exeter FE College

· Mar 2003 - Jun 2003 Technical Support Manager Cognito

· Jan 1998 - Mar 2003 Senior Software Engineer Digita Ltd.

· Sep 1993 - Jan 1998 Senior Software Engineer Intasoft Ltd.

· Jun 1987 - Jan 1993 Embedded Software Engineer, Dowty Information Systems

· Aug 1986 - Jun 1987 System Integration Engineer STC

· 1984 - 1985 Student placement Lion Systems Development

Other Relevant Experience

· Resolving requests for information and computer problems from people with disabilities as an IT Can Help (ITCH Network) volunteer.

· Recording talking newspaper for the blind.

· Ran an 'introduction to computing' course with Age Concern as a response to age related exclusion from the web and raise awareness of open source and open accessibility solutions.

· Construction of electronics projects including computer, music and audio.

· Enjoys swimming, running, cycling, walking and 'Monroe bagging'..