Meet the Team

Charles LaPierre, Principal Accessibility and Content Quality Architect

Charles has over 25 years’ accessibility development experience and has been a pioneer in accessible product development since 1993. Charles currently a member of the following W3C Working Groups: Publishing Working Group, MathML Refresh, ARIA, APA / Personalization Task Force, as well as a member of the EPUB3 W3C Community Group, and co-chair of the Accessibility Metadata W3C Community Group. Charles is the technical architect of the Global Certified Accessible initiative at Benetech to certify publisher content as conforming to the EPUB 1.1 Accessibility Specification, for which Charles was a co-editor.

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George Kerscher, Ph.D., Senior Advisor of Global Literacy

George began his IT innovations in 1987 and coined the term “print disabled.” George is dedicated to developing technologies that make information not only accessible, but also fully functional in the hands of persons who are blind or who have a print disability. He is an advocate for semantically rich content which can be used effectively by everybody. As Chief Innovations Officer of the DAISY Consortium, Senior Advisor, Global Literacy to Benetech, and member of Publishing Groups in the W3C, Kerscher is a recognized international leader in document access. In addition, Kerscher chairs the DAISY/NISO Standards committee, Chairs the Steering Council of the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), and serves on the Advisory Board of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).

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Robert Laurie, Director of Partner Operations

Since joining Benetech in 2024, Robert has helped new GCA candidates navigate the program’s mechanics and understand its value. Drawing on a rich background in content publishing and years of engagement with publishing and library conferences, he brings deep expertise in content discovery and delivery to his work in accessibility and education equity.

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