Sambhavi Chandrashekar

Sambhavi (Sam) Chandrashekar is a recognized accessibility champion and an award-winning inclusive design educator and researcher with nearly twenty years of strategic and direct operational experience in implementing inclusive design projects successfully in the non-profit, academia, and industry sectors in Canada. Sam is currently the Global Accessibility Lead at D2L Corporation, an education technology company head-quartered in Ontario, Canada. 

Sam worked with the Inclusive Design Research Centre in Toronto for over a decade and taught in the Master of Design program in Inclusive Design at OCAD University and at the iSchool, University of Toronto. Sam holds adjunct professor or doctoral committee member positions at three Canadian Universities and supervises student research in master’s and PhD programs in Inclusive Design. 

Sam actively influences policy and legislation as Vice Chair of Global Leadership Council of the International Association of Accessibility Professionals, Vice-Chairperson of Accessibility Standards Canada's Committees on Accessible & Equitable Artificial Intelligence and Accessible ICT Products & Services, Advisory Council Member of the Canadian Accessibility Network and member of 1EdTech’s GenAI Data Rubric Taskforce and TrustEd Apps Accessibility Taskforce.