Accessibility

When I was a contractor to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's (NREL's) communications department, I learned accessibility guidelines for web site development. For instance, there are guidelines for coding tables, alt text, PDFs, image maps, native file asset metadata, color contrast, and video captioning.

NREL has their own standards and they often defer to the standards established by the office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) or the Department of Energy (DOE), and all must comply with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.

My work with accessibility in Colorado's Department of Personnel & Administration involved the use of auditing and quality analysis software Site Improve. I worked cross-agency to help create standards and guidelines for state employed content creators. I onboarded employees to the Drupal content management system & taught accessibility basics plus how to edit their website content.

My experience with accessibility in web sites:

  • Earned certificate of completion for W3C's Fundamentals of Website Accessibility, 2022
  • Spearheaded and hosted a panel discussion for State employees to learn about accessibility during Global Accessibility Awareness Day 2020. Endorsed by Lt. Governor Dianne Primavera.
  • I listen to sites using NVDA during technical quality analysis, and I've had exposure to JAWS and WindowEyes
  • Tagging for accessibility in PDFs - attended advanced accessibility in PDFs course, 2022
  • Published article "Accessibility for Digital Content Managers and Content Creators," 2020 STC Technical Communication Summit Proceedings. Plus I gave a Summit pre-recorded presentation on the topic.
  • Intermediate understanding of the use of ARIA tags
  • I have interviewed low-vision and blind users about their preferences for site features and for assistive technologies. Attendance at Colorado's OIT Accessibility Advisory Board meetings, 2019-2022.
  • Attended an accessibility seminar during the summer 2016 Denver Startup Week
  • I chose the topic of accessibility for a university term paper in 2016
  • I completed Lynda.com's UX Accessibility Principles course in 2015
  • I completed Lynda.com's Web Accessibility Principles course in 2011

 

Verfified certificate from W3Cx for Introduction to Web Accessibility completion