Ayesha shares her journey to becoming an Accessibility Lead at Solirius as well as insight into her top tips and interests.
Meet Ayesha Saeed, a Senior Accessibility Specialist with over 5 years of experience working in accessibility on a range of products in both public and private sectors. She has a wide variety of experience including conducting audits, delivering training, and building implementation plans with teams, through to app accessibility and consulting.
How did you get involved in accessibility?
I have a QA background and so I started my accessibility journey by conducting accessibility audits, which prompted me to begin learning about accessibility principles and user-focused design. I really enjoyed learning about accessibility and all the different specialisms within it. I studied Social Anthropology at university so I enjoyed learning about people and understanding the numerous ways people interact with technology.
I went on to work on a government project where I learnt lots about the laws surrounding digital accessibility; GDS standards and WCAG compliance. I expanded my experience to mobile apps, gaining invaluable insights into the nuances of mobile accessibility and learning more about guidelines for iOS and Android platforms. I began to cultivate a culture of accessibility on the projects I worked on, educating my team, working to ensure that accessibility considerations were no longer an afterthought.
Currently, I am an Accessibility Lead at Solirius working on another government project, managing several services and ensuring they have the necessary guidance to deliver accessible services. I support on testing practices, writing Accessibility Statements and working with teams to build roadmaps to make their services accessible. I also deliver training sessions to empower services to integrate accessibility principles in the early stages of development and help to motivate them to sustain their efforts throughout the process.
What are your interests?
I like to cook a lot and enjoy taking my mum’s classics and turning them into veggie friendly versions using my homemade seitan. I also like to keep active by swimming regularly and (occasionally) attempting yoga. I’ve also gotten into crocheting recently and enjoy seeing what I can make.
Top accessibility tip?
Don’t feel like you need to know it all! Digital accessibility is such a rich subject and can be difficult to grasp when you are new to it. Just remember to be patient with your learnings, reach out to peers, read about accessibility and try to get involved with the accessibility communities for support. Your small changes can have a huge impact!
Top accessibility resource?
The A11y Slack - It’s a great community of accessibility specialists and advocates who are friendly and open to help. It is free and open to all, and you can join at web-a11y.slack.com.
Contact information
If you have any questions about accessibility or you want to find out more about what services we provide at Solirius please get in touch.
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