Michael Larsen

Over the past decade, Michael has been actively engaged in the realm of software testing, focusing on audits and testing fixes in alignment with U.S. Section 508 and E.U. WCAG accessibility standards. His commitment extends beyond testing, as he is equally passionate about promoting accessibility and inclusive design through talks and training sessions. Michael leverages a diverse set of tools, including Axe, Lighthouse, Wave, VoiceOver, JAWS, NVDA, ColorContrast Analyzer, among others, to facilitate the accessibility testing process. He has played a pivotal role in urging organizations to prioritize accessibility considerations in their software development and testing endeavors.
Moreover, Michael possesses a knack for uncovering issues within systems, collaborating with developers to rectify them, and assisting customers in devising innovative solutions. His overarching mission is to nurture and lead top-notch testers and test teams, fostering a culture of excellence in the field.
With an extensive career spanning three decades, Michael has lent his expertise to various product domains and industries, encompassing network routers and switches, virtual machines, capacitance touch devices, video games, and a wide spectrum of client/server, distributed database, and web applications.
Beyond his software testing endeavors, Michael boasts an impressive array of achievements and affiliations. He holds a Black Belt certification from the Miagi-Do School of Software Testing, co-founded and facilitates the Americas chapter of Weekend Testing, serves as a director for the Association for Software Testing (AST), leads instruction for the Black Box Software Testing courses offered by AST, curates training materials for the SummerQAmp initiative, and currently holds a position on the board of the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference (PNSQC).