Our instructors and techs are the real deal
PubCom's instructors are seasoned pros who continue to work in the industry in addition to conducting classes.
They teach from real world experience…every class is filled with practical how-tos, tips, tricks, and on-the-job examples. You will learn from the masters!
Bevi Chagnon, ADS MBA AIGA
PubCom's founding partner heads up the training and consulting teams.
Bevi Chagnon is half designer, half geek, and 100 percent teacher. She's a prolific writer on design, web, desktop publishing, Sec. 508 accessibility, technology, digital media, and cross-media publishing. Look for her work in your class handouts and custom workbooks, as well as online in various forums, tech lists, industry websites, and her blog, The Electronic Page.
Her 35+ years in the industry has made her accomplished in many design disciplines (magazine art director, graphic designer, web developer, digital media developer, photographer, and architect) while pioneering and mastering many of today's computer technologies.
If it involves communication in any format — traditional and digital, MS Office to Adobe Creative Suite — she's a guru.
Today, Bevi is a technologist and information architect for government, academic, and enterprise communications…print, digital, electronic, web, PDF, Sec. 508, accessibility, EPUB, and whatever new technologies Apple, Adobe, Microsoft and Samsung will create in the future.
Experience: Standards
Bevi is a frequent contributor to several forums on accessibility. She is a long-standing ACP (Adobe Community Professional) on Adobe's forums. Look for her blue striped avatar, which is the hexagram for "breakthrough."
In terms of accessibility, Bevi points out in her classes that she was born into a family with disabilities and has been personally and professionally affiliated with the communities for many decades.
So Bevi understands how our documents need to be used by people with many disabilities: blindness, low vision, upperbody motor disabilities, cognitive, hearing, neurological…she has worked with people with all of the disabilities covered by accessibility guidelines.
Long before Section 508 was put into law in 1998, she worked with a small group of web-standards pioneers who developed many of our HTML/CSS concepts in use today. Eventually, these were carried into the first iterations of the WCAG accessibility guidelines.
Today, she focuses on document accessibility and PDF/UA, but still "lurks" in many WCAG forums and occassionally chimes in.
Experience: Software
For the past 30 years, she has been a highly-regarded advisor and beta tester to major software companies, and has had a part in developing much of the digital media and publishing software on your computer; so she understands how these software tools work—and how we can maximize those tools for efficient, creative, cross-media publishing.
She also holds various certifications from Adobe and other software programs. She is an expert for MS Office and Adobe Creative Suite applications, and she is a member of AIGA (the American Institute of Graphic Designers).
Bevi's firm, PubCom, is a member organization of the PDF Association.
And she is a member of the IAAP (International Association of Accessibility Professionals) and was part of the committee that created the Accessibility Document Specialist (ADS) certificate program. She herself is a certified ADS.
Experience: Government
Bevi is a very familiar face to government publishers; she has taught for the US GPO's Institute (IFPEP) since the early 1990s, created curriculum ranging from the earliest desktop publishing software to today's latest technologies for publishing.
Through both GPO and PubCom, she has worked directly with countless government agencies and their publications for over 3 decades. She works not only with federal agencies, but also state, local, and foreign governments.
Bevi is considered one of the country's top consultants on government publishing. She covers all forms of publislhing, from public-facing "glamour" publications and Word-based reports to database-driven reference tomes and content that is cross-published in various technologies.
Experience: Teaching
In addition to heading up PubCom's stable of instructors, Bevi is a trained educator and has been an adjunct faculty member at George Washington University's publication specialist program, Howard Community College, Prince Georges Community College, and Montgomery College in the Washington DC-metropolitan area. She also developed curriculums for digital media and design for these and other colleges.
Today, she is PubCom's senior instructor for accessible documents, and is a frequent speaker at publishing industry conferences and accessibility seminars around the world. She is a Certified Technical Trainer (CTT).
Topics she teaches: accessibility (Sec. 508, AODA), cross-media / digital media technologies, XML, publishing management, management of accessibility throughout enterprises, desktop publishing, Acrobat, MS Office, Adobe Creative Suite, photography, digital image correction, graphic design, web design, printing technologies, marketing, and product development.
Education
MBA — The Johns Hopkins University
BA — Environmental Science, Syracuse University
BS — Environmental Design (Architecture), State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry
CTT — Certified Technical Trainer
Graduate-level coursework in education and technologies
ADS — Accessibility Document Specialist
Still a designer at heart
Bevi maintains her private design and art studio through PubCom as well as during her personal time. Spare time endeavors: photography, gardening, architecture, found sculpture, and not cooking (her burnt-cheese sandwiches are legendary!).
Karen McCall, M.Ed.
Karen McCall, M.Ed. has been working in the field of accessible document design since 1999. She began her career in website accessibility and auditing and moved to accessible Word, PowerPoint and PDF documents in 2004. Karen is:
- A Canadian delegate to the ISO 14289 or PDF/UA (Universal Accessibility) committee and has been for a number of years.
- A Canadian delegate to the ISO 32000 PDF committee.
- A Microsoft MVP for Word (Most Valued Professional) since 2009.
- A Microsoft Accessibility MVP since 2017 when this category of MVP was established.
Karen has written several books on the topic of accessible document design for Word, PowerPoint and PDF documents as well as smaller publications with specific techniques for working with Office applications if you are using adaptive technology and/or the keyboard.
Karen is the president of Karlen Communications.
