LinkedIn A11y Eng
As part of the Accessibility Engineering team at LinkedIn, I contributed to enhancing web & mobile accessibility across LinkedIn’s line of products.
For a time, our role as “Accessibility Engineers” were twofold (until eventually we focused solely on engineering):
Engineering
This included reviewing code from teams across LinkedIn, suggesting improvements, or implementing solutions ourselves directly into the given tech stack, be it Ember.js, Play/Glimmer/Dust, or other frameworks in use at LinkedIn. We also vetted all design system components for a11y.
For build tooling, I authored a Babel plugin for Ember.js apps that adds a test’s file path to test metadata available through @ember/test-helpers. This integrated with ember-a11y-testing and Axe-core testing to allow us to ultimately determine Team-ownership of accessibility violations found during automated testing. We then surface metrics to teams and leadership to help inform remediation prioritization.
Consulting
- I co-ran web a11y training sessions to educate developers on best practices, and mentored engineers through LinkedIn’s A11y Champions program.
- We also alternated on running a11y office hours, guiding product, design, and engineering teams on accessibility issues and solutions.
Conferences, Speaking
We had the amazing opportunity to attend various accessibility conferences to stay updated on the latest trends, technologies, and best practices in the field.
- I co-presented a session at CSUN 2019 on “Turning Engineers into Accessibility Champions” sharing insights into LinkedIn’s Accessibility Champions program.
- We attended/volunteered at other a11y “camps” around the Bay Area as well as Microsoft’s Ability Summit 2018 at MSFT HQ in Redmond.
Special Events
- I also helped present at one-off events like GAAD (Global Accessibility Awareness Day) at LinkedIn to raise awareness about accessibility to leadership within the company.
- I had the privilege of talking about accessibility from a UI-engineering perspective and demonstrating assistive technology to a select group of about 25 students participating in the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Peninsula Summer Apprenticeship Program.
