Ken Nakata is a lawyer and consultant who leads the Seattle office of BayFirst Solutions LLC, a Washington, DC consulting firm. Ken brings a balanced perspective as a technologist, disability rights expert, and former government attorney. In his current work, he helps both public and private sector clients comply with accessibility requirements and regulations while fostering innovation that improves the lives of people with disabilities.
Throughout his career, he has brought a balanced perspective towards disability rights. From 1992 through 2004, he worked as a trial attorney in the Disability Rights Section of the U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division, where he helped develop the Department’s policies concerning the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. Where violations were clear, he vigorously enforced these disability laws; where violations were less clear, he helped shape proactive policies and helped state and local governments and private businesses reach amicable settlements.
In 1998, Ken spearheaded the Department’s role under Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. In this role, he helped balance the competing needs of people with disabilities, private industry, and the Federal government by shaping policies and helping people understand how different laws and regulations work together.
As a consultant, Ken now brings this knowledge to help his clients. He helps Federal agencies develop compliance programs to avoid costly complaints while simultaneously planning for and achieving best practices. He helps his clients understand how different disability laws fit together and how they apply in specific factual contexts. He also helps his private sector clients understand disability rights laws and regulations, win buy-in with management and stakeholders, and plan for the future.
Ken brings a “real world” understanding of how to make technology accessible and how to get results. He helped develop the technical assistance material used by the Federal government for achieving web and software accessibility and has conducted one-on-one workshops with developers, helping them write the programming code to achieve accessibility.
His consulting work continues this focus on technical leadership in accessibility. He has helped major companies shape their products for accessibility. He has led his team to develop previously undocumented accessibility solutions in mainstream products, to empower his clients to convince major software companies to make market-wide accessibility revisions, and to take on a leadership role in working groups and standards organizations.
The marketplace has rewarded Ken for his leadership role in the area of IT accessibility. Since starting in late 2004, his work has grown to over $2 million annually. He leads his Seattle team with the belief that innovation must be inspired and not demanded. Since 1998, he has been a leading speaker on IT accessibility at over 100 conferences and symposia in the United States and abroad.
Ken is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Law School (J.D., 1988) and the Johns Hopkins University (B.A. Mathematics, 1984). He is admitted to the bars of New York, Washington, DC, and Pennsylvania and has recently applied for admission to the Washington state bar. He has a working knowledge of SQL, HTML, XML, and JavaScript and has been certified by Sun Microsystems as a Programmer for the Java 2 Platform. He lives in Seattle, Washington with his wife Laura Ruby.
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