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HARDIK SINGH

Access, Retrofitted

Co-leading WCAG 2.2 AA remediation and an Ember to Angular migration on a learning platform students were using while we rebuilt it.

ROLE
Product Owner
SCOPE
Accessibility audit and remediation, frontend migration
SKILLS
WCAG 2.2, audit triage, migration sequencing, acceptance criteria
STATUS
Shipped

Context

For a major US learning platform serving thousands of students, accessibility was not a feature request. It was students who could not complete coursework, and a standard, WCAG 2.2 AA, that gives no partial credit. In parallel the frontend had to move from Ember to Angular without breaking a live product.

The problem

Retrofitting accessibility is harder than building it in. Every fix competes with roadmap features, and every migration risks regressing the fixes you just shipped. Two programs, one codebase, zero downtime allowance.

What I did

  1. Co-led the WCAG 2.2 AA audit, cataloguing violations and triaging by user impact rather than ease of fix.
  2. Sequenced remediation alongside the migration so components were fixed once, in the new framework, not twice.
  3. Wrote acceptance criteria that made accessibility testable: keyboard paths, contrast, screen reader behavior. Then helped automate that testing, wiring screen reader validation into QA.
  4. Kept both tracks shippable release over release on a platform students used daily.

Outcome

The platform reached WCAG 2.2 AA compliance while completing its migration. Access and architecture upgraded in the same motion. Alongside it, I scoped and de risked an AI education proof of concept for the same client.

What it taught me

Accessibility gave me the sharpest definition of quality I have. The product either works for this user or it does not. This site is built to the same standard.