About Derek

25+ years in accessibility and inclusive design. Teacher at heart. Read on for the longer version or reach out to work with me →

I wanted to be a teacher from the time I was 12. By 23, I was teaching high school biology, chemistry, and computers. By 27, I got sick — burned out early in my career, and it was enough that I decided to leave teaching high school.

Teaching was still in me though. I started teaching public workshops and leading private training, teaching people how to build web sites... front end, back end, accessibility, and more. And I didn't want my source materials for teaching to be ONLY the things I'd read in a book or found online. I wanted to teach with the kind of credibility that only comes from having actually done the work.

So I built a design and development shop. Real clients, real projects, real problems to solve. I needed to earn the right to teach from experience — and that's how I did it. That company eventually became Simply Accessible — because somewhere along that journey, accessibility and inclusive design stopped being one consideration among many and became the work I cared most about.

I've spent 25+ years in accessibility (yeesh, that's hard to say out loud). Enough time to have watched accessibility evolve, repeat itself, and humble a lot of smart people — including me. I founded Simply Accessible, which was acquired by Level Access in 2018. I spent four years there as Chief eXperience Officer. Then three years at Salesforce leading Product Accessibility and Inclusive Design, setting accessibility vision and strategy for one of the largest software companies in the world.

I've led from the executive suite. I've done the hands-on work. I've been the consultant brought in to fix things, and I've been the internal leader trying to steer a massive ship, prioritize the right systems, and make things stick.

The organizations I work with are usually past the point of asking "should we do accessibility?" Note that I said "usually" but not always... everyone starts their journey where they are, and if you need answers to the "should we do accessibility?" question, I can help you there too. As I was saying... USUALLY, they're asking "why isn't this working the way we hoped?" — or "we're doing well, but we are hitting a ceiling and we're not sure how to break through it."

The question underneath both is the same: what would it take for this to actually stick? To make it more burn-out proof? To make it the way we all want it to be... just a built in default. Inclusive by design, not by retrofit.

That's the work I find most meaningful: helping organizations set their direction and find ways to break inertia and establish momentum — building the flywheel that keeps things moving without someone pushing against the immovable object every day. (And co-creating that with you is what's most meaningful to me... but more importantly, it's usually what's most valuable to the teams I work with. Win-win.)

I'm not the consultant who shows up with a pre-defined, one-size-fits-all framework and leaves. I'm direct about what I see, including the things that are uncomfortable to hear. I'll challenge your assumptions — about your roadmap, your team structure, your measures of success. Because that's the work that's needed.

A few things that aren't on my résumé: I've been called Feather since I was about 12 or 13 — so yes, the domain makes sense. I lived in Ottawa for almost my entire life, but now live just north of Toronto. I'm a huge Blue Jays fan, and if you ever come to town there's a good chance I'll offer to take you to a game.

I believe deeply in constructivist learning — the kind where you build skills by doing real things, not by absorbing information and hoping it transfers. (This probably explains a lot about how I work.)

I'm also trying to get better at slowing down. After years of feeling like I had to read business books to keep up, I've started reading fiction again. Turns out, giving myself space is one of the better things I can do for my thinking.

If any of this sounds like what you're looking for, tell me what you're working on →