Brian DeConinck, a white man in his mid-30s. He is wearing a sweatshirt and a jacket, and is standing in front of the ocean on a clear day.

My name is Brian DeConinck, and I am a digital accessibility specialist and front-end developer.

I work for Ad Hoc, where I support the accessibility efforts on VA.gov for the United States Department of Veterans Affairs.

What is accessibility?

Accessibility is the practice of ensuring that products, tools, and services work for people with disabilities.

Disabled people frequently face barriers that prevent them from entering spaces, participating in communities, and earning or spending money. These barriers are a failure of policy, design, and engineering, rather than any limitation intrinsic to disability. Especially when building digital tools, there’s no reason why we can’t provide an accessible and inclusive experience.

Professional approach

In addition to following WCAG standards, I apply inclusive design principles in my work and push for accessibility beyond compliance.

As a former front-end developer and former manager of a web services team, I have tremendous empathy for the designers and engineers who want to do what’s right for their users but may not have deep experience with accessibility. In my work, I aim to trust and empower my colleagues. I try to give people the ability to accomplish tasks, the training needed to understand their options, and the in-context feedback to make good choices. That means:

  • Designing and building digital tools and experiences that are centered on accessibility.
  • Helping product teams understand how their choices can lead to an inclusive experience.
  • Providing honest assessments of risk and impact, so teams can make informed decisions about how to prioritize work.
  • Building tools and processes that provide useful feedback as they complete their work.
  • Making good accessibility practices something easy to build into existing processes—embracing the shift left ethos and not playing “compliance cop” after the fact.

I do my best to make ethical design decisions. I believe we have an obligation to think about the consequences of how everything we build might be used—and when possible, to ensure that they won’t be used to hurt, exclude, or take advantage of. I think about Sara Wachter-Boettcher and Eric Meyer’s book Design for Real Life constantly.

Testimonials

I’m very grateful to a few folks who have said some really nice things.

Public Comments

Excerpts of LinkedIn Recommendations from people who like me enough to say so in a public place:

If someone were to ask me who I have enjoyed working with the most in my entire 10+ year career, Brian would be one of the first people to come to mind. He is excellent– as an accessibility specialist, as a leader, and as a downright humble and genuine human being…

… Brian cares. It is so easy to tell how much he cares about the people around him and how much he cares about who his work is for. Despite having one of the most (if not the most) difficult job at VA.gov … I have NEVER seen him lose that core quality.

Josh Kim

… Brian is a quiet giant, an expert’s expert. I learned so much from working with Brian. I doubt he’d admit it, but he’s the focus around which an entire community of accessibility specialists orbit within VA…

He is also incredibly kind — he approaches complicated technical and governance challenges with grace and humor that always help folks to feel welcome at the table. He doesn’t seek to be the loudest voice in a room. He’s always there to provide insights when asked, though.

Eli Mellen

Private Comments

Excerpts from colleagues in private or internal messages about my work (you’ll have to take my word for it):

Thank you so much for this incredible detailed feedback. It’s a pleasure learning from you.

UX researcher

I have been using this bookmarklet and it’s really changed my whole life.

Accessibility specialist, about a testing tool I built

Shout out to Brian DeConinck because he’s so thorough in his accessibility feedback in such a way that it really helps designers understand the reasoning behind accessibility best practices so we can learn and need less guidance in the future.

UX designer

Personal information

I am based in beautiful Chicago, Illinois, where I share my life with Dr. Emily Barnard, our son, and two cats. I dream of one day writing my novel, which I have previously described as “what if Contact but then nothing happens” but I promise there’s more to it than that.

In other media

I have given up on most social media, but you can still find content generated by me at:

  • The Writing section of this website. I don’t keep this as a long-term running public blog. Instead, I add and remove posts based on how useful or relevant I find them to be (or how much shame I feel when re-reading them). Think of it as a curated experience that’s theoretically more interesting for you.
  • LinkedIn. I’m not really a LinkedIn person, but I keep my profile up-to-date, occasionally check my messages there, and try to remember to post when my company is hiring for accessibility roles.
  • GitHub. I sometimes share code I’ve written and find useful, until it’s old enough that it’s embarrassing and I take it all down. I think that’s how open source is supposed to work, right?