Longbridge, England, United Kingdom
Experienced Usability Consultant with a demonstrated history of working in the information technology and services industry. Skilled in User Experience, User Centred Design, Content Management Systems (CMS), HTML, and JavaScript. Strong consulting professional. Studying Astronomy and Planetary Science with The Open University.
Managing a small team of accessibility consultants in delivering accessibility consultancy ranging from technical audits and user tests, through to ongoing involvement in accessibility of agile projects, particularly app development.
Managing accessibility focused projects for clients. This involves acting as the key contact with clients for their accessibility and usability requirements throughout a project lifecycle. In-depth consultancy led work including creation of custom guideline docs, liaising with development teams regarding accessibility solutions and specific, ad-hoc, requests on technical solutions. Provision of user experience testing, both moderated and remote, to highlight real-world issues relating to accessibility and usability. Presentations, training and workshops on practical usability and accessibility, aimed at designers, developers, content writers and others.
Main part of job is auditing websites to current WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) standards and producing reports on any accessibility issues found with said websites. These reports detail the importance of any issues, along with recommended solutions and examples of good practise. While websites are the main focus of the work, I've also been involved in accessibility testing of online learning resources, such as the Learndirect scheme as well as other on and offline applications. In addition to the structured audits, I also help with carrying out disabled user testing of products. This complements the checkpoint based approach used in audits by employing users with disabilities to give first hand accounts of experiences when using websites. I've also been involved in some website builds, using PHP\MySQL to create interactive assessment sites which guide users through series' of questions to make appropriate recommendations based on their route through the site.