A photo of Matthew looking directly at the camera, brown hair, wearing a blue shirt in a park. There are trees and garden roses in the background.

Matthew is a digital accessibility advocate and a disability champion. Born deaf, he lives and breathes in captions. His passion about making live captions universally available to foster inclusivity.

Matthew currently works for Thoughtworks, a global technology consultancy as a global program manager for accessibility and disability inclusion. He leads initiatives across 19 countries to integrate accessibility and AI into the fabric of our technology solutions. Additionally, he serves as a Board Trustee and Chair of the External Audiences Committee at Scope, where he promotes digital inclusivity for disabled individuals.

Matthew’s commitment extends to his role as a trustee for the National Association for Deafened People, advocating for assistive technologies for those with hearing loss. He also contributes to an inclusive environment for all as part of the EDI (Equity, Diversity and Inclusion) Advisory board for Fulham Football Club.

Here are some of the recent activities Matthew personally has been involved in:

  • Advocating for live subtitles at public venues. Here is a story about Lord’s Cricket.

  • Collaborating with the UK Ministry of Justice on making court trials more accessible, something that emerged after becoming the first profoundly deaf person in UK history using live captions to be included in an English jury, serving as foreman on two cases.

  • A member of the global ‘Immersive Captions Community Group’. The purpose of this community group is to determine and publish best practices for access, activation, and display settings for captions with different types of Immersive Media - AR, VR & Games

  • Produced ‘YouTube video’ with Google to promote their Live Caption feature on Pixel Phone.

  • An advisor to ‘TranscribeGlass’, a startup company in India to develop affordable real-time captioning on heads-up display. TranscribeGlass was "Highly Commended" in the Accessibility category of the AbilityNet Tech4Good 2021 Awards.

  • Spearheaded an awareness campaign with six organisations in the UK that highlights the glass ceiling for people with disabilities.

Matthew Johnston