Page 38 - FCW, November/December 2021

INDUSTRY INNOVATORS
rising star
Nathan Cunningham
Policy Advisor, Office of Disability Employment Policy
Labor Department
People with disabilities have an unemployment rate nearly double the national average. Nathan Cunningham believes workplace technology has the potential to be a great equalizer, as long as it is designed with accessibility in mind.
Since 2015, he has overseen the Labor Department’s Partnership on Employment and AccessibleTechnology, which fosters collaboration between industry, government and advocacy organizations to ensure that emerging workplace technologies are accessible from the start.
In 2020, his work led to PEAT’s partnership with the Start Access initiative, managed by the American Association of People with Dis- abilities and funded by the Verizon Foundation. It encourages start-up companies to adopt accessibility and universal design as a business imperative.
At the Labor Department, he has coordinated a cross-agency work- ing group that focuses on Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, which mandates accessibility requirements for agencies’ IT systems and web content, and he has convened government and standards-setting teams to influence Section 508 policies.
Cunningham’s colleagues say he has a knack for making abstract issues tangible. In all his efforts, he relies on his expertise in human- centered design and his identification as a person with a disability to show why workplace accessibility is essential.
INTELLIGENT WAVES Graypath
Graypath is a cybersecuri- ty solution that uses algo- rithms to sense and adjust message flow according to channel availability and bandwidth capacity. U.S. special operations forces have been early adopters.
The software-defined, cloud-hosted, distributed virtual network provides security, performance and reliability. It uses spread spectrum technology to separate application traf- fic data packets and simul- taneously send the pack- ets across multiple secure communication channels and media.
Intelligent Waves’ devel- opment of the technology was powered by its acqui- sition of cybersecurity firm Ski Systems. Gray- path’s success has driv- en growth for Intelligent Waves, a small company that has won $300 mil- lion in new awards in the intelligence and special operations sectors of the government market.
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