Sean Smith, Accessibility Expert, HM Revenue & Customs

Sean joined HM Customs and Excise from University in 1983, moving to HM Revenue and Customs when HMCE and the Inland Revenue merged in 2005. After serving five years in the City of London VAT Office, Sean moved to the Department's IT division where he had a number of roles including developer, project manager, procurement officer, helpdesk manager and, for ten years, a business analyst. During this period he worked on the Department's business and technical architectures and obtained an IT MSc.

Sean's introduction to Accessibility came just over two years ago. With the introduction of Part 4 of the DDA and the public sector Disability Equality Duty, he wrote and published the HMRC IT Accessibility Equality Impact Assessment. He now works full time within HMRC on Accessibility, overseeing improvements to the Department's standards and working practices and resolving issues for individual members of staff. HMRC has 83,000 staff including some 600 who use products such as Dragon, JAWS, Zoomtext and Read and Write. Between them, these users are based in around 100 Departmental offices and have access to around 200 of HMRC's c800 legacy systems.

Sean also works with two Accessibility groups. Firstly, he helped set up a cross industry Group - the Business Taskforce on Accessible Technology. Sponsored by the Employers Forum on Accessible Technology and chaired by HMRC Board member Steve Lamey. BTAT seeks to raise the profile of Accessibility with IT Suppliers, and to produce and share with members Accessibility best practice. Sean is also a member of the Cross Government Accessibility Network which has similar aims. The two groups work together on common issues.