Annie Heckel

Annie Heckel is the current web accessibility program manager for Cornell University, but her career began on the academic side of higher education, rather than on the staff side. After finishing a master’s degree in medieval English literature, she taught writing and literature at a for-profit university for about a decade. High student loads and no paths for advancement made Annie turn to her experience with digital humanities projects and web development for a career change, at which point she stumbled into web accessibility. After learning to perform accessibility audits and spending two years as the Director of Accessibility Auditing at the accessibility services company Online ADA (now ABILITY), Annie moved back into higher ed, but this time on the staff side. At Cornell, she has worked on streamlining and unifying digital accessibility processes as well as integrating digital accessibility practices into everyday workflows across the entire university.