Wednesday, 13. September 2023
About me
Hi! I'm Sarah Fossheim (pronouns: they/them), and I work as an accessibility specialist, front-end developer and inclusive designer. I have a strong interest in dataviz accessibility, and also make drawings with CSS, write about tech, collect ethical design resources, and work on a lot of side projects.
I'm located in Oslo, Norway, and working independently. You can hire me on a freelance basis for accessibility projects, creative coding and front-end consulting. I'm also open to do talks, workshops and training sessions. I'm taking on new clients from October 2024 onwards.
Since starting my own business mid-2021, I mainly focus on accessibility, to which I take a holistic approach. Depending on what the project needs, I can perform:
- High-level accessibility reviews to understand areas for improvement
- Detailed and informative (dataviz and web) accessibility audits and reports, focused on best-practices, WCAG compliance, and practical next steps
- Ongoing feature reviews
- Accessibility strategy and planning
- Training, workshops, ongoing drop-in review sessions
- Implementing accessibility improvements and bugfixes (or advise the team on the improvements)
- Developing new features with accessibility and WCAG compliance in mind from the start
During the past years, I have worked on accessibility with companies like FINN.no, WHO (through Kore and Truth & Beauty), Inspera, GreenInfo, and Balansekunst. I have also delivered sessions for amongst others Hyper Island, Oda, and Graphic Hunters, spoke at conferences such as axe-con and Outlier, and contributed with an essay about dataviz screen reader accessibility to the Do No Harm Guide on Centering Accessibility In Data Visualizations.
In addition to accessibility work, I also take on creative coding and front-end consulting projects, like building user-friendly websites, prototypes, and dashboards, where accessibility is an important focus. I have worked together with companies like Vibbio, HTTPArchive, and reMarkable on projects like this.
Previously, I have worked in-house in the edtech and biotech sector, where I focused on designing and building intuitive front-ends for data-heavy products. I have also worked as a creative technologist in design agencies, where I collaborated with clients both in the private and public sector.
My strength has always been in multidisciplinary roles. As an accessibility specialist I combine performing audits and reviews with providing training, engaging in project planning, writing documentation, and getting hands-on with front-end development or design work. And in engineering projects I typically take on a double role as ux designer/front-end developer.
If you have a project that you think might fit me, you can reach out through collab@fossheim.io or LinkedIn, or read more about my offering.
Technologies
- HTML
- CSS
- JavaScript
- TypeScript
- React
- D3.js
- Sanity
- Eleventy
- Next.js
I'm available for
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Accessibility reviews.
Don't know if your products or data visualizations are accessible? What's needed to move in a more inclusive direction? How to become WCAG compliant?
I can do a detailed or high-level accessibility review, and based on the outcomes suggest fixes and next steps. Often this also includes building internal accessibility documentation & guidelines.
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Front-end engineering.
I'm a front-end, design and accessibility cross-breed. This means I build products and websites that are user friendly, accessible and scalable.
I'm open for ongoing front-end consulting, standalone projects, and accessibility engineering. I can independently build accessible websites and prototypes, make accessibility improvements to existing products, or work embedded in a team building the front-end for new features.
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Inclusive design & accessibility training.
Do you want to learn what goes into building inclusive products? Get your designers up to speed with designing and documenting keyboard and screen reader interaction? Freshen up your front-end team's WAI-ARIA and semantic HTML knowledge? Or dive into the world of dataviz accessibility?
You can book me for one-off presentations and workshops, or recurring training sessions, one-on-ones and Q&As.
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Creative coding.
I build good looking, user-friendly, responsive and accessible websites, blogs, and interfaces. I can run the process from start to finish, and often design directly with code.
I enjoy challenges involving different ways of working and visualising data and content, and have a lot of fun writing creative css (eg. creating photorealistic CSS drawings).
Fun fact: I've been writing HTML/CSS since I was 10 ✨.
Latest Posts
Saturday, 31. December 2022
Looking back at the past year (and a half) of accessibility work.
Wednesday, 21. December 2022
Building an accessible theme picker with HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
Talks
I have spoken at public events and on podcasts since 2021, including:
- Accessible Product Design @ Product Design Meetup, Kortrijk
- Dataviz Accessibility Workshop @ Graphic Hunters
- Dataviz Accessibility @ FINN.no UX Evenings 🔗
- Data Visualization Accessibility @ Data Stories Podcast 🔗
- Dataviz Accessibility 101 @ axe-con 2021 🔗
- Are your data visualizations excluding people? @ Outlier 2021 🔗
Book me for a talk
I'm open to do deliver talks or workshops about (dataviz) accessibility, queer-inclusive design, and front-end development. If you're interested in booking me, send an e-mail to collab@fossheim.io. Please include some information about the event/company, dates, audience, and budget in the initial message.