Director of Engineering, Accessibility and Certified Accessibility Professional
I'm a designer, UI engineer, certified accessibility professional, musician, and O'Reilly author with over 30 years of experience. With a background in behavioral psychology and neurology, I focus on leading, promoting, and advancing accessibility at every stage in the product development lifecycle.
I have a published training course titled Accessibility Unlocked, and I maintain Right Bad Code, my accessibility-focused blog.
Coforma, LLC.
As a player-coach, it's not only about the code, but also the success of the people I lead. As a mentor, I not only educate but also provide a different perspective in support of their efforts to level up. I also work across multiple teams and departments, focusing on advancing accessible design, UX, and coding best practices.
Guru Technologies, Inc.
As the Staff UI Engineer and Accessibility Lead, I led the Design Systems Team and focused on building accessible components from the ground up. I also conducted quarterly accessibility reviews, implemented and maintained the company's Accessibility Conformance Report (ACR) based on the Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT). As a Lead and individual contributor, I served as a mentor and worked with various departments.
"I feel so fortunate to have worked with Homer on Guru's design system team. He is incredibly knowledgeable about accessibility and UI development, and so generous about sharing it. He has made me a better engineer, both in terms of technical expertise and by broadening my understanding and appreciation of building accessible products. He is also a natural leader — our 100% remote team was one of the healthiest and closest I've worked on, all because he fostered an environment of mutual respect, psychological safety, and playfulness. Homer is a gem of an engineer."
"I've known Homer since I hired him at UserTesting. Homer has been an integral part of any team he has joined. I've never seen someone so at ease to take designs and product direction straight to code all the while keeping accessibility at the forefront of everything he does — he has also trained me to be vigilant in making sure I think about accessibility. He's been able to transition from an Angular stack to React very easily and has grown immensely through his career, not shying from writing thorough tests or diving into large icy problems he stumbles across."
To learn more about my professional experience, follow me on LinkedIn.
I graduated from Indiana University East with my B.S. in Psychology with focus in Neurology and Graphic Design
HTML, Markdown, CSS, Sass, BEM, JavaScript, TypeScript, React, Storybook, Custom Design Systems, Semantic Web
User Experience Design, User Interface Design, Accessible User Experience, Accessibility Audits, Accessibility Remediation, Accessibility Conformance Reports (ACR), VPAT, WCAG 2.x, Section 508, ARIA, Inclusive Design,
Photoshop, Illustrator, Figma, Photography (Canon, GoPro, Mobile), Sketching
Front-end Web Design and Development, Accessibility, Psychology, Neurology, Neurodiversity
Regardless of skill level or role in a company, accessibility is everyone's responsibility. This on-demand course will help learners understand how to approach accessibility and how to apply the guidelines found in the WCAG so they can build inclusive products. Learners will also gain a realistic perspective on how building accessible products is not as difficult as it is often made out to be.
This journey takes an honest look at the daily struggles of being an accessibility professional in an industry that often views accessibility as an afterthought. Drawing upon personal experiences, I explore three types of empathy and how they build upon each other to form a foundation for building more inclusive applications.
Your project isn't ADA compliant, now what? Where do you even begin to apply the information in the WCAG? This talk highlights common accessibility issues and how to use the various sections of the WCAG and RACI to help establish a way forward, allowing you to build a better, more inclusive product.
Check out my Sessionize profile to see the list of my current talks.
I have been producing music and scores for independent film projects since the early '90s. Finding inspiration in many genres, my music is cinematic, with an ambient mix of rhythmic undertones and driving beats that flood the environment and become the backdrop for every mood.
My music is available for streaming on the following platforms as well as others world wide: