About me:

Julie Howell is Director of Accessibility at digital design agency Fortune Cookie. Prior to this, she was the Digital Policy Development Manager at the Royal National Institute of the Blind (RNIB), where she worked for 12 years. She has worked with policy makers, information architects, manufacturers and software designers, businesses and government agencies to ensure that the digital information products and services are accessible to disabled people. Julie was a founder member of the National Health Service’s (NHS) Care Record Development Board (CRDB), working to ensure that the forthcoming NHS Care Records Service is accesible to disable persons. She is a member of the NHS Voluntary Sector Advisory Group and a technical author of the new British Standards Institution (BSI) specification for accessible website design. In 2005, Julie received the New Media Age Effectiveness Award for “The Greatest Individual Contribution to New Media. “ In 2007, Julie received a “special lifetime achievement“ award at the Imperatives Digital Awards. In May 2007, Julie joined a European Union delegation to China to address a government conference on China's digital divide.