Prior to joining Microsoft, Rory worked for a number of South Africa’s large companies as an Integration Architect.
Rory’s focus for the last 7 years has been on research and development (R&D) with a focus on cloud research, consulting and training.
Working in research has allowed him unparalleled insights into industry movements, trends, and news.
Rory is extremely passionate about the programming community and has been critical helping them create a South African flavoured digital disruption strategy.
Rory is an organiser of the Kotlin and Java developer user groups and has led the Johannesburg AWS user group for 2 years.
When not captivating the crowd with his presentations as a technical speaker, he can be found in the front row with a distinguished laugh, infectious enough to break the awkward silence in any audience.
His expertise includes PaaS and Java, and he holds an honours degree in Computer Science.
Accepted Talks:
Programming for accessibility
My life is a hilarious roller coaster of miss-intended programming bugs because at 4 foot tall and 65 kilograms I completely fall off your radar.
Why did my scale call me! Why does facial recognition see me as a child? These are all valid questions I often ask myself as I navigate my weird and different world. Have you heard the phrase “You have to be this tall for Micro-services”? well what about: “You have to be this tall to operate a mobile phone?”. I am finding it harder and harder to reach any button except for “#” and “9”.
Building accessibility into the planning stages of programming can eliminate barriers for participation and create an inclusive environment for people with disabilities. Programming for diversity serves as an unquestionable indicator that your software embraces the diversity of your users and cares about their safety and comfort.
Join me on a fascinating and thought-provoking look at how you can program for accessibility.
