James Bateson Résumé

A passionate accessibility specialist. I'm empathetic, hard-working, reliable and keen to learn. I care about people and love making services accessible to as many people as possible and being part of a culture that supports this.

Professional Experience

Front End Designer and Accessibility Specialist at Code Computerlove logo Code Computerlove

April 2021 - Present

Manchester, UK
  • Formed and run the accessibility champions network. Helping bring together people from multiple disciplines with a passion for accessibility to collaborate and make change
  • Contributed to the successful rollout of interactive design annotation workshops using Figma to improve accessibility awareness and feedback loops between designers and developers
  • Advocated for more understanding and use of semantic HTML over custom JavaScript solutions
  • Bridged the gap between accessibility best practices and diverse tech stacks (MVC, React) by seamlessly integrating inclusive features and bug fixes into existing product codebases and at the start of new projects
  • Led the implementation of several automated and manual accessibility testing practices. Including axe DevTools, WAVE, keyboard-only, VoiceOver and NVDA. Championing for this to be part of ticket writing in the process
  • Ran a series of multidisciplinary accessibility skillshares in various interactive and presentational formats
  • Leveraged my passion for accessibility to deliver engaging talks at QA Beginners Club (Testing Accessibility), Manchester Tech Festival (Accessibility Champions: Creating an Accessibility Culture), and HCD Manchester, influencing attendees to embrace inclusive practices
  • Contributed my voice to the accessibility conversation, authoring informative blog posts on semantic HTML elements (HTMHell and The A11y Project—currently in review), WCAG 2.2 intro, and fostering an inclusive company culture through accessibility
  • Performed accessibility reviews of components and pages on various products. Highlighting priority issues and actions to internal colleagues and client partners in technical and non-technical roles.

Front End Developer at Fat Media logo Fat Media

September 2013 - March 2021

Lancaster, UK
  • Taking flat designs and transforming them into responsive, accessible, resilient, and performant static websites/components
  • Integrating static templates into dynamic CMS-based templating files (MVC, PHP, Twig)
  • Contributor and maintainer of the company front-end framework
  • Responsible for quoting projects and jobs
  • Ran a series of lunchtime learning sessions
  • Worked on projects using both waterfall and agile philosophies

Skills

I consider myself very much 'front-of-the-front-end' and my passions lie around HTML, CSS, accessibility and performance.

Core

  • HTML
  • CSS
  • Presentational JavaScript
  • Git
  • Accessibility - including good knowledge of WCAG 2.1/2.2
  • Performance/site-speed optimisations
  • Grunt/Gulp
  • Ability to effectively communicate technical issues and solutions across different disciplines

Experience with

  • React
  • Vue
  • HTML templating languages (Nunjucks, liquid)
  • Figma
  • Component libraries
  • Design systems
  • Testing libraries

Education

Multimedia Technology at Leeds Beckett logo Leeds Metropolitan University

September 2009 - June 2012

Leeds, UK
  • Graduated with a second-class honours degree (2:1)
  • Gained experience in a variety of media disciplines. Web design & development and graphic design, audio & video recording/editing.

Note

This résumé should print nicely if that's your kind of thing.