Usman Afzal

Accessibility Consultant

Usman is a hugely experienced front-end developer and accessibility specialist.

His background is in the strategic development of component libraries and full websites, for the likes, of LoveFilm, Pearson Education, Corbis Images, Action on Hearing Loss, BCSG, and Living Group.

He has brought accessibility as a value and skill to his development, and that of his teams, since 2008. For UK Parliament, he led, managed and mentored a team of engineers within a multi-disciplinary environment with an objective of delivering their accessible, semantic, responsive, data-driven website. He has done the same for Publicis Sapient & Snook.

How did you get into accessibility?

I got into accessibility in 2009 through my time as Web Co-ordinator for RNID, where I was working with and managed colleagues that were deaf or hard of hearing.  I was responsible for managing the organisation’s digital platforms, and was also working on the redevelopment project for the new accessible digital brand.

What's the one thing you've done in accessibility you're most proud of?

At UK Parliament we delivered the online service for petitioning against a hybrid bill. I was leading the development team in implementing the accessible user interface for the service. In order to rapidly build, test and iterate, I developed Pugin Composition; the prototyping tool for developers to work with the UK Parliaments accessible digital brand we were also developing. The service went live successfully in January 2018.