Employee Spotlight - Michael Vaughn

What is your current role at Yale University?

I’m the Associate Director of Digital Accessibility. I am part of the web technologies team within Information Technology Services (ITS).

What are your main responsibilities?

My role was created in 2018 to help grow operational support for digital accessibility at Yale. My team provides consultation, remediation, and training, with the goal of creating a world-class accessible digital experience at Yale for students, faculty, staff, and visitors. Our team has a particularly high level of expertise with web accessibility, including expert knowledge of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), which has become the de facto standard for making websites accessible to people with disabilities. We help anyone at Yale who creates content, builds websites or mobile apps, or purchases digital technology understand what should be considered to be sure our digital campus is accessible.

What do you like most about your work?

I have had a long career in higher education working in all areas of information technology. I consider myself a bit of a nerd, and I love solving technical problems, so working in IT has always been a good fit for me. Being focused on digital accessibility has been particularly fulfilling, as it has allowed me to leverage the breadth of my experience in IT to better communicate the specifics of digital accessibility to other IT professionals.

How does your job affect your general lifestyle?

I think it’s important to be able to balance work with the rest of life, so I don’t let my jobs get in the way of that as much as possible. Working in higher ed in general and at Yale specifically has helped achieve that work-life balance. My current job at Yale has made me much more aware of the barriers people with disabilities encounter in their everyday lives than I was before I took this role. That experience, combined with working on a team of really intelligent, caring people has helped me grow as a person.

How did you begin your career?

I got my first degree in violin performance, combined with the equivalent of a double-major in computer science. I was afraid to try to rely solely on violin playing as a career, so I got subsequent master’s degrees in music education and music technology. After 1 year of public school teaching, I moved over to an IT job, which is the field I’ve been in ever since. I combine this with a pretty active role as a freelance musician.

What steps would you recommend one take to prepare to enter this field?

People enter the web and digital accessibility fields from a variety of backgrounds. Learning the specifics about making technology accessible takes a fair amount of effort, so regardless of your background you should put a lot of effort into expanding your understanding of disability, assistive technology and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

What skills, abilities, and personal attributes are essential to success in your job/this field?

If you’re the kind of person who takes pride in doing things the right way, you’re likely to be a good fit in this field.

If you could do it all over again, would you choose the same path for yourself? If not, what would you change?

If I did have the opportunity to go back and change anything, I’m sure there would be unintended consequences. I’m very happy to have had so many great experiences in my life, so I wouldn’t want to do anything to change that.

What does DAY mean to you?

I think every organization should have an affinity group like DAY for people who identify as having a disability to meet and share, along with their allies. Too many people see disability solely as a health condition rather than as part of someone’s unique identity. DAY is about embracing the valuable diversity that the disability community brings to Yale.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

If you don’t know much about digital accessibility, challenge yourself as a baby step to learn to use the Styles pane in Microsoft Word. Not only will it help you make your documents more accessible, you will become a much more proficient Word user in the process!