Matt Campbell, Chief Technology Officer and Cofounder
Matt Campbell, Chief Technology Officer and Cofounder
Matt Campbell is a visually impaired software developer who has focused on improving accessibility since the late 1990s.
Linux Accessibility Contributor
He started his accessibility development career with contributions to the Linux desktop operating system.
His goal was to provide a useful alternative to the expensive Windows assistive technologies of the time.
Serotek Product Developer
In 2001, Matt joined Mike Calvo at Serotek, to make accessibility not only affordable but also easy to use.
Matt’s innovative approach to software development led to many cutting-edge features. For example, when browsing the web with the System Access screen reader, users didn’t have to switch in and out of a special mode to fill out forms.
Creator of Serotek’s System Access to Go
Matt created System Access to Go, a feature-rich screen reader running on any Windows PC.
System Access to Go, powered through a simple web browser, is the first screen reader of its kind which requires no installation.
Blind and print disabled individuals today can make any PC computer accessible no matter where they are in the world, absolutely free of charge, through the Accessibility Is a Right (AIR) foundation.
Developer of Serotek’s RIM & RAM
Matt also developed both of Serotek’s remote access solutions: Remote Incident Manager (RIM), and Remote Access Manager (RAM).
These twin customer support tools enable blind IT professionals to provide technical support and training to both blind and sighted users.
Multi-Platform Developer
While at Serotek, Matt developed additional sundry applications for every major platform:
- Windows
- MacOS
- IOS
- Android
- Amazon Alexa
- Web based-environment
Joined Microsoft’s Windows Accessibility Team
In 2017, Matt left Serotek to join the Windows accessibility team at Microsoft.
As part of that team, Matt made key contributions to the development of Narrator, the screen reader built into Windows. Among other improvements, he implemented an overhauled keyboard layout and contributed to Narrator’s support for the Chrome web browser.
Matt also played a key role in major improvements to the Windows UI Automation API. His contributions helped enable built-in and third-party Windows assistive technologies to provide rich, responsive access to even the most complex applications, in a secure and robust way.
Long-time followers of Serotek may remember the 2016 blog about problems with the Microsoft Edge browser. Matt wrote most of the points, and is especially proud to have helped solve the problems he raised in that blog post during his time at Microsoft.
Matt Joins Pneuma Solutions
A little over three years after joining Microsoft, Matt once again moved onto new challenges.
He’s rejoined Mike Calvo, this time as Cofounder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Pneuma Solutions: the leader in accessible cloud-based solutions.
Here Matt will lead the development of solutions to some of the most pressing accessibility needs facing people with print disabilities at home and on the job.
AccessKit
In 2021, Matt began to receive funding from the Google Fonts team that would go towards the development of the AccessKit project. AccessKit is cross-platform accessibility infrastructure that aims to enable accessibility across a range of UI toolkits. It has since been implemented into the Egui toolkit, and thanks to that implementation, the user interface for a voice control access program has been enhanced with equal accessibility on Windows and Mac. The inclusion of AccessKit in the Bevy game engine made it the first general purpose game engine with built-in accessibility support.
Further developments will se AccessKit making inroads into a range of additional platforms – IOS and Android to name but a few – as well as game engines such as Unity.
