Richard is the Chief Technology Officer, Accessibility, for IBM Software, an IBM Distinguished Engineer and Master Inventor. His responsibilities include overall accessibility architecture and strategy for Software Group. Richard participates in numerous W3C standards efforts including HTML 5, WAI Protocols and Formats, and Ubiquitous Web Applications. Richard created and chairs the W3C WAI-ARIA accessibility standards effort for Web 2.0 applications as well as the IMS GLC Access for All accessibility standards efforts. He also formed and co-chairs the Open Ajax Alliance Accessibility Tools Task Force which is leading the the industry in establishing new WCAG 2 accessibility rule sets and reporting best practices needed to support Web 2.0 applications.

Richard is a former steering committee member of the Accessibility Interoperability Alliance and a member of Raising the Floor's team of experts working on a Global Public Inclusive Infrastructure focusing on cloud-based personalized access. Richard joined IBM at the Watson Research Center in 1993 where he helped design and develop Screen Reader/2. He, later, led numerous accessibility efforts at IBM, including: the collaboration with Sun on Java accessibility where he co-architected the Java Accessibility API and the IBM Self Voicing Kit for Java; the Web Accessibility Gateway for seniors; and the IAccessible2 strategy. Richard is an internationally recognized expert on accessibility with over twenty years of accessibility experience.