Our journey to help share accessibility knowledge through A11y Quick Check

Laurence wanted something different from the accessibility tools he was using which tended to report accessibility issues, while not identifying bad code practices. He decided to build a tool to help promote good accessibility coding practice, not just report on broken code affecting accessibility.

What started as Laurence’s personal project to simplify a collection of individual bookmarklets grew into a collaboration and close friendship when Marcus Helvig joined Telstra and offered his development skills to improve the codebase. New to accessibility at the time, Marcus found that working on A11y Quick Check became a journey of its own.

Join Laurence and Marcus to hear how creating A11y Quick Check became a valuable learning experience for them both.

Laurence Lewis

Laurence Lewis began his career in printing pre-press before retraining as a front-end web developer in the late 1990s. In 2012, a chance conversation with accessibility expert Bryan Garaventa sparked a passion for digital accessibility that has defined his career ever since. Laurence joined Telstra in 2020 as a Senior Accessibility Specialist, bringing his knowledge of WCAG, ARIA and HTML semantics to the newly formed accessibility team. In 2022, that same drive led him to create A11y Quick Check, to help with manual testing and continue to grow his technical accessibility knowledge.

Marcus Helvig

Marcus has been a computer geek since childhood. After several decades of desktop development, and a computer jack-of-all-trades, Marcus was given the opportunity enter the world of accessibility at Telstra. He quickly became the team’s data analyst, giving the team the opportunity to better understand the accessibility maturity of the teams they support. His work on A11y Quick Check allowed him to learn accessibility and web technologies through hands-on experience. Marcus is passionate about sharing stories about his neurodiversity, to improve everyone’s understanding, and let others know they aren’t alone.