Meryl K. Evans, speaker and trainer

07/24/2025

📣 Accessibility isn’t charity. It’s clarity. It’s risk reduction. It’s your reputation.

If your captions confuse people, if your onboarding forms block users, if your content turns away potential clients without you realizing it ... your team is leaking trust.

I help fix that. With lived experience. Strategic clarity. And systems that actually stick.

If your team needs to communicate better - internally, externally, legally, publicly - I’ve got tools that work. For HR, media, marketing, procurement, and legal teams.

Let’s make accessibility usable and essential.

Services:
- Speaking
- Training
- Consulting

[email protected]

Available for in-person and virtual events. Meryl K. Evans CPACC

04/30/2024

Thanks to Jeff Crilley for hosting me on his show!

03/20/2024

Guess what? You won't believe it ... I published a new blog post! 😮 Two months in a row! Will wonders never cease? 😎

The new post is on disability language. If there are words related to disability that are triggering, you may not want to read the post.

I've been the subject of flaming. I've seen others be the subject of flaming. All because we supposedly used the wrong words related to disability. In both cases, the flamers were wrong. Even allies can be wrong.

Can we try another way? https://meryl.net/disability-language/

If you want to know when the next blog post comes out, be sure to subscribe here: https://meryl.net/newsletter/

I’m not happy with the title. Any suggestions?

🙏Thank you for your referrals and opportunities. I have a client project coming to an end. If you've been wanting to work with me, this is a great time to start!

If you need a speaker or trainer on disability inclusion and accessibility, I do that too!

Learn about disability language and how words can affect people with disabilities. It's important to use respectful and inclusive language.

10/27/2022

Is there a cause you are passionate about? Something you want to advocate for and possibly build a career around?

Join Meryl K. Evans • Digital and Content Marketer and Judy Schramm in our upcoming LinkedIn Live and hear how she evolved into the passionate and highly respected advocate she is today.

Register @ bit.ly/3SIuMvL

10/26/2022

Introducing, Meryl K. Evans • Digital and Content Marketer, Professional Speaker & Trainer on Accessibility and Inclusion. You may have seen and heard of Meryl as she was a featured speaker at this year's TEDxPlano. Meryl has coined the phrase, "Progress Over Perfection" in her work to educate everyone on the importance of accessibility. She rightly believes that fighting for accessibility should be everyone's responsibility and that everyone can take steps to learn how to make progress towards a more inclusive world. She provides tangible tools and resources to teach others how to advocate for accessibility and educates companies, students, associations, and fellow community members to become knowledgeable inclusion allies.

Meryl recently graduated from Leadership Plano, Class 38, and now serves on the Leadership Plano Board of Directors. She is a native Texan and currently lives in Plano with her family.

To read her full interview: https://www.planochamber.org/50-leading-women-meryl-k-evans/

09/23/2022

Whoda thunk I'd be doing ?

Not me! I didn't think I had a voice for podcasts ... a face, yes. 😁

I've been fortunate to have received a lot of invitations. More coming shortly.

Here's one for the pros and others trying to effect change in the hiring and interviewing processes to be more accessible and inclusive.

You can read or listen! There's a well-formatted transcript included. https://lnkd.in/eDmh3vNs

Meryl Evans, accessibility expert and LinkedIn Top Voice in Disability Advocacy 2022, discusses the top small steps that hiring managers can take to impact inclusion in talent acquisition. Companies often miss opportunities to hire skilled workers because of barriers in the hiring process. Sharing h...

09/12/2022

What's more exciting than having your TEDx Talk posted?

Having the talk featured as a TEDx Editor's Pick! 😮❤

Accessibility allies, this is big because the TEDx Team understands the importance of . They feature hot and important topics. It had one related to autism.

How did the talk become reality? Here's my initial submission:

The year's theme is "reconnecting." Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who struggle to connect in the first place. Let me tell you a very short story.

Once … … time, … deaf … reader watched … story. Lip …, on …, … catch one-third … … said. … end.

This story I told had more than one-third of the words. How much of it made sense to you?

The reality is that on average, people who read lips catch only one-third of what's said. Refer back to the short story. Can you connect with it? Do you feel like you're missing a lot?

When I'm out there in public, this is how life is almost every day for me as a deaf person. Like many people with disabilities, I felt locked out. Disconnected.

The pandemic completely changed that. And we cannot go back to the old ways of doing things.

[End submission]

Initially, my hope was to show how the pandemic helped accessibility. The call to action was: "We cannot go back to the old way of doing things because it will lock out people with disabilities who finally found more independence and work opportunities."

However, talking about how different disabilities benefited from the pandemic was too much! Narrowing the focus made it doable.

I made sure the talk had these elements:

- Teach something new
- Involve the audience
- End with a call to action

Meanwhile, the video almost has 20,000 views! If you haven't watched it and given it a 👍 yet, please do. When the community sees how many views a topic has, then they know it matters.

Here's the video. https://lnkd.in/gBktGX2C

If you have watched it, thank you! Please share it with your network.






Image: Screenshot of TEDx YouTube home page with "Editor's Picks: New, inspiring talks from TEDx's global community" with my talk appearing first.

06/28/2022

Excited to be on on Twitter today at 2 pm CDT. Here's a captioned recording of the interview.

Meryl Evans, CPACC (she / her / deaf) is an author, professional speaker, and accessibility marketing consultant with over 20 years of experience who happens to be born hearing-free aka profoundly …

05/13/2022

Are you in the area? Come to North Texas Disability Chamber's Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) event on May 19 with breakfast from Taco Deli.

Oh, and connect with me in person too! Everything is free! https://www.eventbrite.com/e/morning-fireside-chat-with-meryl-evans-registration-301527194957

05/07/2022

In 2019, I attended my first-ever accessibility conference.

It changed the course of my career.

The organizers invited me to talk about captions.

That event was Knowbility AccessU. I felt like I had found my people. I wanted to work in accessibility. I had no idea how I would do it, but that's where I want to be.

The conference provided the spark. It took time as all good things do.

That event led to another speaking event ... and another ... and another ...

At that point. I had been engaging more on LinkedIn. After the conference, I started commenting and talking about accessibility and my lived experience as a person with a disability.

Those posts led to far more engagement than the ones about digital marketing. And I enjoyed these topics more.

I can credit my work on LinkedIn for landing me my first client in accessibility. Thomas Logan said he first spotted me on LinkedIn. He started reading my posts. Eventually, we connected and have already met in person ... twice!

We are opposites on the Myers-Briggs and we collaborate beautifully. This is what happens when you work with people different from you. Thomas is also responsible for encouraging me to get involved in educating people about the need for accessibility in extended reality (XR) including virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR). Learn more: https://lnkd.in/e7DihiMV

Now it's coming full circle. I'm heading back to Austin for AccessU this upcoming week. Rumor has it I may have some stickers to pass out. Those attending virtually, I'm sorry this is the one thing I can't give y'all. But not everyone gets a sticker. I don't have that many! You can get yours here (shirts and mugs too)! https://lnkd.in/g4dXv8Xg

If you're attending AccessU, be sure to check out my most comprehensive captioning presentation on Tuesday, May 10.

They have an accessible escape room this year! I'm so excited to do that, especially with the incredible team that includes my sister Elisa Miller, Cam Beaudoin, Carie Fisher, MS, CPWA, and Jillian Fortin Burtnett. As Jillian says ... the escape room is OURS!

Other upcoming speaking events.

May 11: Entertainment Globalization Association Access Summit (virtual)
May 19: A11yBay (virtual)
May 19: North Texas Disability Chamber in Plano, Texas (in person)
June 3: AWE USA (in person)
June 9-10: XR Access Symposium (virtual)

Get event links and details here. https://meryl.net/about/

Please sign this important petition: https://chng.it/XzPLhhW5