DIrector, Accessibility & Disability Inclusion
Laura Allen serves as Director for Accessibility & Disability Inclusion at Google, within Google’s centralized Products for All team. Laura and her team drive internal and external facing programs across the world, and work cross-functionally across teams to improve the accessibility and usability of Google products and processes, also making Google a more accessible and equitable place for people with disabilities. In addition to her core role, Laura is the Global Head of Operations of the Disability Alliance Employee Resource Group. Due to her personal experience with low vision, she believes that technology has more power now than ever to transform lives, and progressing accessibility and disability inclusion is her true passion and purpose.
Prior to her central role within Products for All, Laura served as the Senior Accessibility Program Manager for the Chrome and Chrome OS teams at Google. For over 6 years, she collaborated with engineers, designers, product managers, and researchers to make the Chrome family of products more accessible and usable across platforms, for people of all abilities.
Laura also represents Google in the Teach Access organization, where various technology companies, higher education institutions, and disability advocacy organizations come together to drive the inclusion of accessibility in core computer science, design, human centered interaction programs, and other key disciplines to close the accessibility skills gap. As of 2020, she serves as the Chair of the Teach Access Board of Directors. Since 2017, Laura has also served on the board of directors for the San Francisco Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired. Since 2020, she also serves on the board of the Alphapointe Foundation, an organization centered around empowering individuals who are visually impaired to achieve their goals and aspirations and gain meaningful employment. And in 2023, Laura joined the board of inABLE Africa, an organization striving to empower people with disabilities across Africa.
For her undergraduate education, Laura studied International Business, Marketing, and Music at Georgetown University. She also completed an Executive Leadership graduate program at Stanford University in 2021.