The many hats of Jason Khurdan: Digital accessibility, martial arts, and 3D-printed worlds
As manager of digital accessibility for the Office of Information Technology (OIT), Khurdan oversees website and product reviews, vendor collaboration, and training initiatives that help ensure accessibility is built into everything Rutgers creates. Outside the office, that same care shows up in his workshop and his decade-plus practice of Aikido, whether he’s reimagining a genie lamp as a cyberpunk piece or working toward his next belt.
How would you describe your role to someone unfamiliar with digital accessibility?
I think when people think about our role, they think about it in terms of testing things for accessibility. That’s definitely a piece of it, but it isn’t really what we do—the same way Tesla isn’t just a car company. My role is really about making sure accessibility is a core tenet of who we are at Rutgers. I once heard Adam Savage describe culture as the conversations we are having, and I feel like my role is to help shape those conversations to build a culture of accessibility.
You have a background in political science and global affairs. How did that lead you to accessibility?
Most people stumble into accessibility from completely different backgrounds, which I think is part of what makes the field interesting. In grad school, I had an assistantship doing disability services at Rutgers–Newark, which eventually led to me to work at Rutgers–New Brunswick’s Office of Disability Services, running their service areas full time.
As we grew, we realized services weren’t equitable across campuses, so we created RADR, the Rutgers Access and Disability Resources program, to provide central resources to all three campuses. From there, I moved into OIT to continue that work.
Outside of work, you founded the Guardian Fellowship. Can you tell me about that?
That was a nonprofit I ran in Newark for about five years, mentoring kids in the downtown area. It was such a great experience, but when I started working in New Brunswick, I had to give it up because I couldn’t do it to the standard I wanted. Someone once told me life is a balance of holding on and letting go, and I think about that often.
Is there a fun fact about you that even your colleagues might be surprised to learn?
I’ve been at Rutgers for so long that most of my colleagues know quite a bit about me at this point. But not everyone knows I’m a second-degree black belt in Aikido. It tends to surprise people, and it’s not something most people would expect from me.
How did you get into martial arts?
Aikido came first, during my last year of grad school when I had just enough saved to finish school. I decided to spend that time doing things I’d always wanted to try. There was an Aikido school down the block, and I loved the philosophy behind it. Life got in the way for a while after I graduated, but I eventually came back to it as a birthday gift to myself.
I’ve also been doing battōdō, Japanese sword, for about two years now, and I recently attended a seminar to keep sharpening those skills. What keeps me coming back to both is that same sense of awe—seeing someone do something and thinking: I want to be able to do that. I find it beautiful and it’s helped me so much as a person.
You also design and 3D print an incredible amount of things, from Star Wars helmets to a Ghostbuster trap. How did that hobby start?
It started during the pandemic. I thought I’d love the designing more than the printing, but I actually fell in love with the printing side just as much. I’ve made everything from comic-inspired pieces to a music box themed around Misty Copeland with a hidden painting underneath. I even reimagined a genie lamp from Neil Gaiman’s October Tale as a cyberpunk piece.
I think what I love most is that moment when something goes from being on a computer to being in your hands. It feels like something out of Star Trek, and I never get tired of that feeling.
As we wrap up, what’s one piece of advice you’d give to someone looking to strengthen their commitment to digital accessibility?
I think we have to build an environment where we feel safe to talk about the experiences we’re having, whether that’s related to disability or not. When we do that, we find that we all struggle to access and use things differently than we expect. I don’t have a disability, but I can tell you the text on the web increasingly feels smaller to me as I age. The more we can have those conversations openly, the more people’s relationship to the topic of accessibility starts to change, and I think that shift is crucial.
