Our people

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Our hard-working people share a passion for enabling web and digital accessibility for everyone.

Staff

Consultants

 

Dr Manisha Amin

CEO

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Manisha was appointed Chief Executive Officer by the Board of Directors of Media Access Australia on 5 September 2016. She is passionate about social justice and has a strong background in the Not For Profit sector with 15 years’ experience in education, health, disability and social inclusion. She was most recently the General Manager, Marketing & Fundraising, at Barnardos where she was instrumental in directing a number of successful initiatives over her five years at the charity.

Manisha has also previously worked in the technology sector and with government in environmental advocacy. She has a PhD in Arts and Social Science, a Masters in Professional Writing and a Bachelor of Business (Marketing), from the University of Technology, Sydney. Manisha is also on the board of ADHD Australia and is a published novelist.

Jessica Budd

Digital Accessibility Analyst

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Jessica is an Analyst in the digital accessibility team based in the Perth office but working on projects across the country. She conducts full audits on websites to determine compliance with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0) and creates detailed reports to assist organisations to improve the accessibility of their websites, particularly for people with a visual, hearing, mobility or cognitive disability.

She is passionate about making the web a better place for everyone and believes that web accessibility benefits all users at some stage in their lives. Jessica’s background in web development has been beneficial to this role and she also brings over 10 years of experience in the public service. When she's not conducting accessibility audits, you may find her practicing yoga or coding her own websites.

Sarah Christopher

Digital Accessibility Analyst

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Sarah is an Analyst in the Digital Accessibility Services team based in Sydney. She conducts full audits on websites and digital communications to ensure compliance with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0). Like MAA’s other analysts, Sarah creates detailed reports that also include clear instructions on how to fix accessibility issues, which helps organisations improve access for people with a wide variety of disabilities.

Sarah believes web accessibility is paramount because it fosters social inclusion and enables autonomy for people living with disability. She has an honours degree in Behavioural Science majoring in Psychology and Sociology, and her background in User Experience and User Interface Design is highly beneficial to the role. Outside of work, Sarah’s interests include reading, going to the gym, and spending time with her husband and three young daughters.

Natalie Collins

Head of Special Projects and Stakeholders

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In addition to overseeing the operations of MAA, Natalie acts as a conduit between the management of our products and services, business development and digital accessibility consultancy. As a specialist in organisational strategy, she helps other organisations plan and develop their own strategies to ‘bake-in’ digital accessibility into all facets of their organisation.

Prior to Media Access Australia, she was the General Manager at Infoxchange, a Not For Profit social enterprise using IT to assist socially and economically disadvantaged communities. Natalie is passionate about ensuring that everyone, irrespective of ability, age and gender has the same opportunity to participate and contribute using the web. She was a volunteer lifesaver on Sydney's eastern suburbs beaches but is now based in Melbourne, and instead of patrolling beaches in her spare time she discovers cafés.

Maylea Gibson

Executive Assistant

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Maylea supports the CEO by helping organise and manage her busy schedule – and this includes a variety of tasks that vary from day to day. Maylea is well-suited to the role as she loves to be organised and problem-solve, and her most recent position was a Project Manager at market research company Ipsos, managing end-to-end qualitative research projects for local and global clients.

Prior to Ipsos, she worked at KPMG as a Partner Personal Assistant and many other administrative functions within the organisation. Maylea is passionate about inclusion, on all levels – “everyone should have the chance to participate in life to the fullest!” she says. Maylea enjoys family time with her husband and two young daughters, and is fascinated by the human brain and all its capabilities, with a particular interest in mental health and reducing stigma.

Brittany Klaassens

Digital Accessibility Analyst

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Brittany’s main role is to conduct audits on webpages and processes to ensure that they comply to the globally recognised WCAG 2.0 standard. Through this, she is able to suggest changes and improvements that can be made to benefit a wide variety of users and make the content more accessible to everybody.

Brittany is currently completing a Bachelor of Design Computing at the University of Sydney where she has learnt a variety of skills such as user experience, web design, visual communication and interaction design. Brittany enjoys learning different programming languages, problem solving activities and being involved in theatre productions.

Gordon Melsom

Operations Manager

 

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Gordon is responsible for planning, co-ordinating and optimising operations to improve the services delivered by Media Access Australia as well as taking on the task of managing MAA's volunteer program. He is passionate about serving the public, having spent 17 years as a senior public servant with the Federal Government, and brings a diverse range of skills and experience in community liaison, the provision of refugee services, administration, finance, human resources and compliance.

Most recently, he was responsible for providing financial analysis and program change assistance to the Department of Defence. Gordon holds a Master of Business degree and Bachelor of Building Construction Management degree from UNSW. When he's not helping build MAA's organisational capacity to improve media access for those with disability, he enjoys riding motorcycles, travelling and watching live sport.

Matthew Putland

Senior Analyst, Digital Accessibility

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Matt's main role is to conduct website accessibility audits for organisations. This involves creating a large and descriptive accessibility report detailing all of the accessibility issues that occurred with the website, from content, to design, to web coding. He also uses his knowledge of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0), an international standard that supplies recommendations, to improve the accessibility of websites.

When he's not conducting audits, Matt provides technology-specific web content and applies his background in IT to assist with major projects. After working at MAA for three months as a work experience student from Edith Cowan University, he accepted a job offer in November 2015. Before MAA, he studied IT and completed a double major in Computer Security and Information Technology. When not working, Matt enjoys socialising with friends and playing video games with them, locally or online.

Tina Schembri

Head of Practice

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Tina is the Head of Practice, responsible for managing the delivery of our consulting services. Her background is largely in Financial Services having worked for Westpac & NAB in Australia before taking a global role with Barclays Bank in London. Tina has worked with several companies going through transformational change as diverse as Muscle Meals Direct working with bodybuilders through to the Spirituality Ministry working with the Sisters of St Joseph.

Her career has been focused on digital innovations that are customer empowering and bespoke to each market. Tina is thrilled to apply her experience in the accessibility sector and believes that MAA are in a position to make a real impact to how capabilities and experiences are developed through inclusive design. She enjoys travelling the world and eating, and as a mum of a toddler, Tina keeps fit and burns the calories by chasing her around the house and cleaning up the mess – from both her daughter and her partner!

Angela Tragotsalos

Administrative Assistant

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As the Administrative Assistant, Angela provides the Media Access Australia team with administrative support including office and financial tasks. Her work includes researching, data uploads and downloads, putting together contact lists of relevant disability groups and government departments, helping our accounts department, and assisting on special projects and on awareness campaigns.

Angela joined Media Access Australia’s predecessor, the Australian Caption Centre, in 1994. Before that she completed a course in Office Administration at TAFE NSW. Angela is deaf and has both a professional and personal understanding of access issues. She loves being part of an organisation who’s every day aim is to create inclusion through technology.

Jack Tyrrell

Accessible Solutions Profiler

 

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Jack works closely with the Client Solutions Director and the Client Solutions Manager to help profile the needs of organisations either through email, phone or in person, so that organisations can get more accessible. In 2014, he graduated from Swinburne University with a Bachelor of Commerce majoring in marketing, then worked there as a Project Officer in student equity and disability services. In 2015 he moved to Vision Australia and was there for twelve months working across the areas of fundraising, marketing and communications. He then worked at Seeing Eye Dogs as their Tour Project Coordinator, until he joined MAA in August 2016.

Five years ago, aged 20, Jack virtually lost his eyesight overnight, and straight away made the switch to being a screen-reader user. He is passionate about disability and strategies that organisations can adopt to help make people living with disability able to participate fully in every day life.

Belinda Zhu

Finance Manager

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Belinda Zhu brings a love of accounting to her role as Media Access Australia's Finance Manager. "Everyone thinks accountancy is boring but I believe it is very interesting and is in fact a business language." Belinda immigrated to Australia from Beijing in 2000 and obtained a Masters Degree in Accounting from Macquarie University. She is a qualified CPA and has worked with SMEs for 13 years.

Prior to coming to Australia, Belinda worked in HR management for a leading Chinese hotel group and in marketing roles for a travel agency and travel website company. Her passions (aside from accounting) include travel, photography and sailing.
 

Our specialist accessibility consultants provide Media Access Australia with additional expertise.

Dr Scott Hollier

Specialist Advisor, Digital Accessibility

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Dr Scott Hollier is an internationally-recognised web and digital accessibility expert. He has a PhD (Internet Studies) titled 'The Disability Divide' and a Bachelor of Science majoring in Computer Science. Dr Hollier co-created the Professional Certificate in Web Accessibility (PCWA) course with Professor Denise Wood as a partnership between Media Access Australia and UniSA. He has taught this course since its inception in 2011.

His recent projects at Media Access Australia include the Service Providers Accessibility Guide, the Cognitive Disability Digital Accessibility Guide, the Affordable Access project, and in-depth investigations into social media for those with a disability, and the accessibility of cloud computing. He has also worked for six years as an Advisory Committee representative to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), hosts an accessibility meetup group in Perth, regularly publishes papers, and presents at conferences.

Chris Mikul

Specialist Advisor, Captioning and Audio Description

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Chris Mikul has a strong background in captioning and audio description production. He was the National Production Manager at the Australian Caption Centre and joined Media Access Australia at its inception, and now works on a project by project basis.

Chris has an excellent reputation in working with government, disability organisations and consumers as well as giving training courses in captioning and audio description; writing white papers and submissions to inquiries; monitoring caption quality on TV; and promoting and improving these services in Australia. His experience and knowledge in the area of captioning and audio-description is incredibly valuable, given that Australia is behind other countries in providing captioning, audio description and other accessibility services.

 


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