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Andrew Hayward

Accessibility Engineering • Disability Advocacy • #DisabilityPower100

Andrew Hayward is a seasoned staff-level software engineer with nearly 20 years of industry experience, known for his meticulous work ethic and problem-solving skills.

He excels in collaboration with various stakeholders, focusing on user-facing issues while also being proficient in data parsing, platform integration, testing, and documentation.

Prioritizing user needs and technical limitations, Andrew advocates for clear communication and thorough understanding within his teams to achieve defined goals effectively.

He has a strong background in accessibility engineering and UX technical aspects, facilitating cross-disciplinary discussions among product owners, designers, and engineers for comprehensive project strategies and inclusive deliveries.

Andrew holds a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science from the University of Bath and has a diverse educational background from Peter Symonds' College and Winchester College.

His professional journey includes roles at renowned organizations such as Miro, Automattic, Twitter, Shutterstock, Etsy, and Mozilla, showcasing his expertise in software engineering and accessibility across various domains.

Highlights

Aug 30 · linkedin

Accessibility is not a technical or product problem. You can implement all the institutional rules you want around development lifecycles and production processes, but for things to really change your organisation needs to recognise it's a people problem. Until it does, you'll always have teams pushing back, asking why it's important, and whether they can come back to it.

You're not "fixing bugs", you're not "over-designing", and you're most definitely not being "creatively limited"! You can frame it as greater revenue and market share if you want, but ultimately you're removing barriers for people to use your products.

Humans will always design, create, and build for who and what they know and see. If you want to improve your organisation's "accessibility", you also need to fix your organisation's "disability awareness".

Aug 4 · linkedin

After a bit of a break, I’m excited to be starting at Miro today as a Staff Accessibility Engineer. I know I said these positions don't really exist, but I'm glad Miro took a gamble and ran with it!

Related Questions

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Andrew Hayward
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Location

London Area, United Kingdom