Bill Erickson

William Erickson, M.S., is a Research Specialist with the Yang-Tan Institute. He has been actively involved with disability research for over 20 years and has extensive experience in employer research, disability statistics, secondary data sources, survey design, web accessibility, and youth transition related research. He has been involved in employer research since 2000 in both the private and federal sector in the U.S. as well as internationally. This includes analysis of one of the earliest disability focused employer surveys in 1999, leading an employer survey regarding accessibility of online employer processes in 2004 and an employer survey disability inclusive policies and practices in 2011. He is also a Technical Assistance disability statistics expert and has responded to thousands of Technical Assistance requests regarding disability statistics and related information for over 14 years through Cornell University’s DisabilityStatistics.org. Erickson also has primary responsibility for the estimates available online on DisabilityStatistics and is the lead researcher in the production of the heavily used Annual Disability Status Report series.

Bill has extensive experience regarding web accessibility and persons with disabilities especially as it relates to online applications for employment and higher education. He designed and managed a survey of 450 private sector companies that focused on the use of online Human Resource processes and accommodations made by employers to provide accessible online systems for employees and job applicants and was the primary researcher in several studies evaluating online employment application process accessibility for persons with disabilities. He was the lead researcher on a project regarding web accessibility and usability of community college web sites that included both accessibility & usability evaluations, that included a survey of over 700 community colleges regarding their web accessibility policies and practices. Previous projects include: a workers compensation managed care pilot project in New York State, a study examining the relationships between indoor air quality and sick building syndrome within the Department of Environmental Design and Analysis, and the Cornell Retirement and Well-Being Study, a longitudinal study examining issues including changes in health, retirement planning, post-retirement work, community participation and volunteerism in the Cornell University College of Human Ecology. Bill has a master’s degree in Human Environment Relations from the Department of Design and Environmental Analysis at Cornell University.