The last two and half months have been quite an adventure. During this time I applied to work with over 50 companies. I conducted interviews with 28 of them. I went to multiple rounds of interviews with a dozen; and 8 went as far as doing whatever the company used as a technical gauge or code test. Discussions with four companies got to the point of discussing salary. I visited in companies on both the east coast and the west coast.

Through it all, I was able to maintain a pretty positive outlook despite thinking I would be back to work sooner than I actually am going to be.I had a lot of help in finding leads, getting recommendations, and keeping my head on straight through what turns out to be a great transition in my career. The positions I was interviewing for varied greatly from design and user experience, to front end code development. Some were working on product, others working with marketing. Some were startups, one was a Fortune 500, and others were local agencies. It’s all stuff I can do.

Over the last decade I’ve worn just about every hat there is in the web development industry. I’ve built, secured, and deployed servers, databases, and back end code. I’ve worked on mobile, insurance, ecommerce, government, and marketing projects. I’ve written some cutting edge front end code and repaired some highly inaccessible code. I’ve handled user testing, design, user experience, and requirements gathering. But through all of it, I have always had a proclivity to emphasize my work on accessibility. Which is why I’m happy to announce that starting tomorrow morning…

I’m Joining the Team at SSB Bart Group

As a Technical Consultant. SSB Bart Group have created AMP, the Accessibility Management Platform, to help business identify, track, and fix accessibility issues on their websites. Additionally, they provide companies with accessibility training, auditing, and meeting their compliance standards.

In my role of a Technical Consultant, I’ll be helping clients to define their testing, conduct testing, provide reporting and technical consultation, and mentor SSB Bart Group’s analysts and consultants on technical issues. This represents a major shift from being development and UX as a primary focus to accessibility being 100% of my job over these areas. And I am super excited. While I’ve had great roles over the last several years, this is what I’ve been working towards.

Thank You

I wouldn’t have gotten here without my friends and collegues in the industry. Everyone of you that reads this post, I’ve met in person or worked with, or perhaps was just a friend all helped me find this role that is the perfect fit for me. In particular, there are a few people I’d like to call out because they have gone above and beyond in helping my career: Jim Remsik, Peter Aitken, Ed Charbenau, Derek Featherstone, Elle Waters, Natalie Patrice Tucker, Aaron Douglas, Aria Stewart, Aki Braun, Marcy Sutton, Jen Strickland, Jason Hoover, Chris Eigner, and Dylan Barrell. Thank you everyone, and off to the adventure!