Welcome to Accessibility First
I am Julia, a Web & UX Accessibility Specialist. After graduating University in Musicology (BA, MA) and Japanese Studies (BA, JLPT N3) in summer 2020, I started learning front-end development and specialized in the topic of web accessibility early on. Since then, I have taken every opportunity to raise awareness of the issue by creating content regularly in the form of blog articles, giving talks and workshops and providing all information in German, English and Japanese.
I have been certified by IAAP as a Professional in Accessibility Core Competencies (CPACC) in 2022 and got accepted in the Google Developer Expert Program for web technologies in 2023.
In 2025, I started the Web Accessibility Webinar Series via the Google Developer Group Community, through which I am organizing a monthly webinar on various topics in the field of web accessibility.
My Mission
Breaking into accessibility can be overwhelming. It is a broad and always-evolving field. There is no simple checklist to make your products inclusive. Accessibility is about learning and developing empathy for life experiences different from your own.
But web accessibility is much more than that. By creating accessible web applications, as part of the development team, you automatically create high quality code that is sustainable and a good developer experience, which we as developers should strive for anyway. Understanding an application from the ground up and fully mastering our tools that we use on a daily basis, HTML and CSS, is what we should achieve to become Frontend Masters.
I am here to guide you and take your skills to the next level. On Accessibility First you will find articles about accessibility for the online and offline world. To cover a broad spectrum, I also publish articles from other contributors. While Laura focuses on UX research and the physical world, I write about web accessibility, accessibility for every member of development teams and the Accessibility First approach.
To make the content accessible to as many people as possible, I also translate everything into German and Japanese. And who knows, maybe one day I'll get so good that I can also offer content in Austrian sign language (ÖGS).
With Accessibility First, I want to collect insights, learnings, and experiences from industry professionals to spread awareness and help you eradicate invisible barriers.
My Vision
Interdisciplinary teams, working together to make their respective corners of the World Wide Web a pleasant experience for all users.
Accessibility is a team effort. Every role contributes a part to the puzzle to build a good user experience.
Bridging the gap between designers, developers and testers by guiding them creating web content with accessibility in mind to make everyone aware of who actually is responsible for accessibility: we all are!
Contributor
Laura Wissiak
Lead UX Researcher
Laura is a UX researcher currently working on assistive tech for blind and visually impaired users at Hope Tech Plus. Creating inclusive and comfortable experiences is what she strives for, both on and offline.