Title: The Accessibility Advocate and Tandem Cycling Enthusiast

Growing up with a visual disability, Kevin Andrews experienced the effects of interacting with systems that aren’t accessible. He found those experiences of exclusion empowered him, and ever since,  he’s devoted his career to improving accessibility in digital spaces. 

Andrews is the electronic and information technology accessibility coordinator at Georgetown, where he ensures that the university’s policy on electronic and information technology accessibility is implemented. 

He works across the university with different stakeholders to help make websites more accessible, from adding alt text to images and inserting captions for video content. He also coordinates with vendors to verify that new systems meet accessibility standards.

“I was a student not super long ago, and I know what it’s like to face barriers and have to educate staff and then find your own workarounds because there’s a lack of education at the institution,” he said. “I don’t want another student to ever have to go through that. That hit home for me.”

Andrews got his start in a student-facing accessibility role at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he helped students with disabilities use technology and improve accessibility for homework, classes and exams. 

But he knew he wanted to make a bigger impact and contribute to a culture of accessibility. That’s when he found Georgetown in 2019.

Outside of Georgetown, Andrews is invested in the disability advocacy community in Washington, DC. He serves as the secretary on the board of the Metro Washington Association of Blind Athletes, an organization that connects blind and low-vision individuals in the region with recreational opportunities. Through this organization, Andrews will often zip through bike trails on a tandem bike with his friends over the weekend.

Read about what accessibility means to Andrews and how he got into tandem cycling as a person with a disability. 

Why Georgetown: I wanted to have more of a macro-level impact on accessibility at an institution in terms of their IT stuff. What drew me to Georgetown was knowing that they had this electronic IT accessibility policy, which is the main focus of my role, making sure that’s implemented, herding the cattle and wrangling the cats. I’m a big picture thinker, so being able to have my hand in all these different projects and working with my colleagues in UIS and across the institution is something I was looking forward to doing more.

Why accessibility work is important: I’m someone with a visual disability myself, so I’m pretty familiar with the impacts. When something isn’t accessible, it has very real-world consequences for me and people in communities that I’m a part of. My thing is being able to access information equally or have an equivalent form of access that affords you privacy, dignity and independence. That’s why this work is so critical.

A proud accomplishment at Georgetown: One of the projects I enjoyed was the COVID stuff. It was when people started to go on campus again. That was stuff we had to basically do, stop, drop and roll type of stuff. I like that kind of work where we all just do the one thing. We all have a goal, something to accomplish here.

Where I find joy in my work: For me, it’s knowing that somebody understands the impact of the work and when something isn’t accessible. You show somebody what it looks like when [something] is not accessible, and then they want to fix it, and then it gets them excited about fixing other issues. My approach is usually, here are two or three things you can do right now to make your materials or your webpage more accessible. If you throw a hundred things at them, that’s too much. That’s overwhelming.

How I got into tandem cycling: My parents bought a tandem bike when I was growing up. Even as a kid, I learned how to ride a bike on a single, with plenty of crashes and falls like everybody else. We did plenty of rides. I’ve essentially been biking since I was growing up. 

Why I love cycling: I like the feeling. It’s very cliche, but the wind in your hair and feeling the freedom of roaring down the hill. And with tandem cycling, it’s all about trust. You’re with somebody else, you’re in sync with the bike. It’s a lot of communication.

My summer cycling trip: I just went on a three-day bike camping trip with a couple of friends. We went from Cape Henlopen State Park near Lewis, Delaware, at the Atlantic Ocean to Terrapin Beach at the eastern base of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, 90 miles spread across three days of biking around 30 miles a day and camping each night.

One word to describe Georgetown: Community. Why I say that is because over the last couple of years, I have found that you find your allies. Finding community is important, and Georgetown has been one of the ways to do that these last couple of years.