About
Hi, I'm Adam - an accessibility developer based in Leeds, UK. I specialise in building user interfaces which are inclusive, performant and robust.
During work hours, I spend my time finding and fixing accessibility issues in company products. I enjoy working as part of a team which is dedicated to improving the experience for all users.
In my spare time I enjoy making music, swimming and table-top gaming.
Timeline
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2020 - Present
- Hired as a full time accessibility developer for BTL. Worked on making the product meet WCAG 2.1 AA requirements.
- Led accessibility training for designers at BTL.
- Began studying for WAS exam (IAAP).
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2018
- Started work at Extreme as a Front-End Developer. Worked on custom Craft builds, bespoke landing pages and Shopify sites.
- Completed Web Accessibility course (Google).
- Became an accessibility advocate at Extreme and led weekly developer training on accessibility.
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2015
- Started work at Harris as a Digital Developer.
- Worked on custom WordPress sites tailored to clients' specifications.
- Started learning about web accessibility.
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2014
- Moved into web development as a freelancer.
- Worked on custom builds and popular CMSs such as Magento.
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2008
- Previous career as a primary school teacher.
Recommendations
There are so many amazing web accessibility resources available these days. Here are some of my regular go-tos:
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Adrian Roselli's Blog
Adrian has a massive collection of accessibility posts on his blog dating all the way back to 1999! There is a treasure trove of information here as Adrian is incredibly thorough with his research and explanations. As a bonus, he often updates his posts when the situation changes (as it often does with web development).
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Scott O'Hara's Blog
Scott has a relaxed writing style to his blog which makes reading complex topics easily digestable. He frequently deep dives into particular issues and has a wealth of knowledge about a range of accessibility topics.
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Sarah Higley's Blog
Sarah doesn't post very often on her blog but when she does it is fantastic. Her writing on ARIA grid and tooltips are the best I've read and I reference them often.
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Léonie Watson's Blog
Léonie writes about a range of accessibility topics and she has a knack of covering a topic without it becoming overly verbose. She also provides valuable in-depth information about what using the web is like as a screen reader user.
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HTMHell
HTML Hell describes itself as 'a collection of bad practices in HTML, copied from real websites'. This is such a great resource, not only for marvelling at the astoundingly bad markup choices some websites have but also to see the elegent solutions that the contributors give.
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Inclusive Components
This site is somewhere between a component library and a blog. For each post, Heydon take a deep dive into a common website component and discusses it at length. The amount of detail in these posts is exhaustive and they cover almost any question you could have.
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GDS Design System
Whenever I want to see a good example of a website component I go the GDS. Everything they have on here is based on rigourous user testing with every decision being informed by the advice of real users. These are all examples of battle-tested, very robust components.
Contact
You can find me on Twitter, Linkedin or by email at acnorrisuk@gmail.com