TAG Statement
I have been an active member of several W3C groups, including serving as co-chair of the W3C Developer Council; as an invited expert to the ARIA Working Group where I am active in the ARIA Authoring Practices Guide Task Force; as a member of the W3C Privacy Community Group, the ARIA Community Group, the Browser Tools and Testing Working Group, and the WebDX Community Group.
Throughout my career, I have been lucky enough to contribute to companies building on the web platform. From Core Support Engineer and Open Source Contributor at Heroku to
System Structure Design Engineer and Senior Web Developer Advocate at Samsung Internet. Most recently I led the Web Platform Program at Bocoup, within this role I created Bocoup’s strategy for their technical, educational and social web platform contributions. I led the ARIA-AT accessibility program and led the chartering of the AT-Driver specification within the Browser Tools and Testing Working Group. The goal of this specification is to help web developers run automated tests for assistive technologies such as screen readers.
Early in my career I ran my own non-profit, blackgirl.tech, an organisation based in London, UK that aimed to help more black girls, women and non-binary people gain the skills to create on the web. Through blackgirl.tech, we were able to offer paid training and internship opportunities to people in our community, making creating on the web accessible to those who are traditionally excluded.
The work happening within the TAG is about increasing access to the web and ensuring that technology isn’t actively excluding users: I want to contribute to this. The current members of TAG have been doing interesting and valuable work, such as The Ethical Web Principles and The Societal Impact Questionnaire, both of which are child documents to the Web Platform Design Principles. When assessing proposed specifications for safety, I rely on the Web Platform Design Principles as guidance. I have written standards positions (both internal and external) for specifications such as Bluetooth RFCOMM in Web Serial API specification and Related Web Sets (formerly First Party Sets) using a combination of TAG’s position, Web Platform Design Principles, the Privacy Principles, and other organisations opinions such as Mozilla and Apple.
The throughline in my career has been web advocacy and accessibility. I have spent a lot of my time teaching and educating traditionally underrepresented people how to build and create on the web; I have advised web users on how to stay safe on the web, especially those who are hyper-surveilled; and I have championed and contributed to web technologies that improve the web experience for those with a range of disabilities but especially those who rely on screen readers. I will contribute to work that encourages browser vendors and feature implementers to think critically about who they’re excluding and why, as well as the social impact of their technology. I will encourage and contribute to conversations that interrogate the safety of web features and encourage browser vendors to consider interoperable approaches. This is work that is important in making the web more accessible.