Gerry Ellis

Gerry Ellis is a consultant in the area of Accessibility and Usability under the name of Feel The BenefIT, and is a former member of, and a current special adviser to the Universal Access Committee of the European Disability Forum. EDF promotes the interests of over 50 million people with disabilities in Europe. He is a Fellow of the Irish Computer Society, which is the primary Irish organisation “serving ICT professionals and specialists in Ireland”.

Gerry Ellis has been involved at a local, national and international level in organisations relating to the inclusion of people with disabilities for over 20 years.

He is the former Chairperson of the Irish Council of People with Disabilities, which is the largest organisation in Ireland representing people with disabilities, their parents and carers. ICPD has now been renamed to People with Disabilities in Ireland (PWDI). He was a National Board member of PWDI for around 5 years up to October 2006.

He has been active on the National Boards and subcommittees of various mainstream organisations in Ireland which relate to ICT issues. This includes the Information Society Commission which was set up by Government to advance Ireland’s readiness to take advantage of the Information Age.

He has spoken at conferences in 12 countries on 3 continents on disability-related issues. These include Washington DC, Spain, Germany, Brussels and both phases of the First World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva and Tunis.

He has undertaken reviews of web sites and other software for several public and private companies, including The Family Support Agency, the health and Safety authority, revenue Online service and Skillsoft.

He has worked for over 25 years as a Software Engineer with a bank in Dublin.

Abstract of his keynote address for the T4P conference.

See his presentation on The Economic Imperative of Social Inclusion.