Hi, I'm Wes.
I'm blind and use VoiceOver to operate my computer. I spent five years at Apple as a Specialist, including teaching Today at Apple sessions on accessibility. Now I work independently, doing accessibility consulting and building accessible websites.
Most accessibility audits don't use a screen reader in a live setting. I started Next Level Access to change that.
Here's what I do.
Accessibility consulting
I go through your product as a screen reader user and write up what's broken, why it matters, and what a fix needs to do. If it helps, I'll read the markup and point your engineers at the likely cause. I can hand it off, or stay on to see it through.
Accessible web development
I build accessible websites and test everything that ships with VoiceOver and a keyboard, so the accessibility is real and not assumed.
Background
Before going independent, I spent five years at Apple as a Specialist. I taught VoiceOver and other accessibility features in Today at Apple sessions, working with people at every comfort level with technology. That's where I learned to find a problem and explain it without losing the person who has to fix it.
I understand code well enough to read it, audit how it behaves for a screen reader, and know what the result should be. I don't hand-write production code. What I do is work out how something should behave, direct the build, push back when it's wrong, and test every version myself until it actually works. That's how the accessibility layers for Pro Tools and Komplete Kontrol, and Screen Recognition, came together.
I also came up through audio production, which is why several of those projects are music software. I still take the occasional mastering project, but accessibility is the focus now.
If any of this sounds like what you need, get in touch.
I just want to do good work for people who care about getting it right.