We're thrilled to announce the demoers for our upcoming NY Tech Meetup scheduled for Monday, May 13. This event will shine a spotlight on disability tech, and we're proud to partner with esteemed organizations Give Beauty Wings and Equal Entry, to bring you this exceptional event. Register below and secure your spot!

When: Monday, May 13, 2024 at 6:00pm ET (Doors Open) 
Where: Civic Hall Union Square, 124 E 14th Street (@Irving Place by Union Square)

Program:
6:00 PM - Doors Open
6:30 PM - 8:00 PM Welcome and Tech Demos
8:00 PM - 9:30 PM - After Party & Networking

Event Partners: 

Give Beauty Wings is a non-profit organization that offers self-esteem programs for all ages that are tailored to individual and organizational needs. We encourage the universal beauty of everyone and the individual gifts and full potential of every participant (especially those with disabilities).

Xian Horn is a joyful half-Asian woman with Cerebral Palsy, who serves as founder of the non-profit, Give Beauty Wings. She is an advocate, speaker, and Forbes Women contributor. Xian has moderated and spoken at the U.N. many times for International Women's Day, International Day of Persons with Disabilities, and CSW, and she's also presented at The Obama White House, The Harkin Summit, the ACLU, Microsoft, and Apple, to name a few. Xian has collaborated with inclusive corporations such as AT&T and EY as an accessibility consultant and orchestrated and conducted Leadership Trainings for L'Oreal, Target, Zappos, Amazon, NBC Universal, Esteé Lauder, and more. She is a board member of the NY Tech Alliance and served on the advisory board for the AT&T Accessibility Advisory Panel from 2018-2022.

Demoers: 

AccessLint is a GitHub App that finds accessibility issues in your pull requests bringing automated web accessibility testing into your development workflow. When a pull request is opened, AccessLint reviews the changes and comments with any new accessibility issues, giving you quick, timely, and targeted feedback, before code goes live. 

Cameron Cundiff, Co-Founder and Organizer, A11yNYC

Cameron Cundiff is a software engineer working on tech for disability. Cameron built AccessLint, an accessibility testing platform, co-founded and helps organize the NYC Accessibility Meetup, and hosts a YouTube channel called Accessibility Nerd. Cameron lives with his family in Brooklyn.

The Open Steno Project is a volunteer organization that enables thousands to explore stenography without any upfront cost. Their opensource program, Plover, lets anyone use their computer keyboard as a steno machine, reducing costs to zero, enabling anyone to learn stenography for free. 

Mirabai Knight is a stenocaptioner in New York City. For the past 17 years, she has provided realtime captioning for deaf and hard of hearing students and professionals, with a specialization in pharmacy, veterinary, dental, nursing, and medical students. In addition, she has captioned many conferences and cultural events at venues including the United Nations, the Juilliard School, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the New York Public Library. She's also the founder of The Open Steno Project, which has been working to bring the power of steno to hobbyists and enthusiasts with free open source software, free educational materials, and low cost hardware since 2010.

FedcapVR helps institutions, organizations and government supercharge their workforce development with immersive technology. At FedcapVR our approach is always human centered. We work closely with employers, career practitioners, career coaches and other education and training professionals ensuring our technology works for them first.

Dennis Sze, Director of Finance, Workforce Development at The Fedcap Group

Harrison Olajos, Director of Innovation, FedcapVR 

Harrison is the Director of Innovation at FedcapVR and has been involved in the immersive technology space since 2016. His passion for gaming intersects with his love for hands-on learning. Focusing on immersive technologies like virtual reality, Harrison aims to break down barriers to education. He collaborates with educational institutions, government agencies, and corporate partners to modernize teaching and training methods for the next generation of workers.

Equal Entry's mission is to encourage more equitable access to information by raising awareness to improve public education about accessibility, and close the gap between what is being taught and what needs to be taught.

Thomas Logan, Owner & CEO, Equal Entry

For 20 years, Thomas Logan has helped organizations create technology solutions that work for people with disabilities. Over his career, he has worked with startups to Fortune 500s including Microsoft, Google, Meta, Bank of America, New York Times, Princeton University, and Disney. He has also done projects for many federal, state, and local government agencies in the U.S. He's the owner of Equal Entry, whose mission is "contributing to a more accessible world." Clients come to Equal Entry for accessibility audits, training on accessibility, and legal accessibility expertise. He's the founder of Accessibility Virtual Reality and co-founder of Accessibility New York, and Accessibility Tokyo. These are Meetups related to accessibility and people with disabilities. Thomas and Ken Nakata have a podcast called A11yInsights. In every episode, they look at a legal case, a proposed or passed state law, and interesting news stories related to digital accessibility and the law. You can catch their episodes in the Equal Entry blog.

Bridging Voice enables and empowers people with neurodegenerative disorders to communicate by removing the barriers between them and assistive technology.

Karina Nagin, Executive Director, Bridging Voice

Karina Nagin has been working in the social impact space for over 20 years. She most recently served as the Executive Director for a global health non-profit dedicated to increasing surgical capacity across Africa. Previously Karina worked at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) where she consulted corporate, philanthropic, and non-profit leaders on issues of humanitarian response, health and education. While at CGI Karina oversaw the Democratic Republic of the Congo Action Network and led an initiative created by President Clinton to support promising university students through mentorship. Prior to living in New York, Karina worked in India on early stage implementation for several start-ups and social enterprises. She received her B.A. from Pitzer College and Master’s of Public Administration from Columbia University (SIPA). Karina was born and raised in Hot Springs, Arkansas, but now enjoys calling Brooklyn home.

About NY Tech Meetup

NYTM is our signature event that has been a staple for the NYC tech ecosystem since 2004. It's the world’s largest meetup group of its kind with members who have a common interest in learning from and helping one another. At each event, entrepreneurs, founders, CEOs, and their teams demo cutting edge and transformative tech, answer questions from attendees and network with all in a welcoming, fun-filled space. Since its creation, over 1,000 companies have participated and have been a driving force of innovation and job creation in NYC and the greater NY area.

This event is a perfect place to start if you are new to tech, to New York City, or to the New York tech ecosystem.  It’s all about meeting people and having a "front row seat" to learn of the latest innovations that address market opportunities.