In 2005 Gareth founded the BBC’s Digital Accessibility Team. Over the course of the first 3 years the Accessibility Team were an integral part of iPlayer’s core Product Team and ensured the BBC iPlayer V1.0 launched as a fully accessible product. Gareth also established the BBC’s Design Research Team in 2010 and subsequently became a Head of UX Design.
Whilst at the BBC some of his achievements included:
In 2006/7 he established the BBC’s HTML accessibility working groups re-write WCAG, making the guidelines more relevant, measurable and deliverable. Also delivered guidelines for and Childrens Games and Subtitles. 2009 he wrote and delivered the accessibility requirements for the YouView.com platform, including firsts for single switch access, cognitive UI design and a built-in magnifier on a TV platform.
2011 his team pioneered the worlds first Mobile Accessibility Guidelines, BBC MAG
2012 he established the world’s first Accessibility Champions Network and in the same year became and founding contributor to GamesAccessibilityGuidelines.com
2014 he co-wrote the first physical workplace neurodiversity guidelines 2016 he managed the accessibility research that informed the development of the BBC’s accessible typeface, BBC Reith and has gone on to become a specialist in accessible font design
2017 he launched the BBC GEL Tech Docs and project to make accessibility easier to deliver using Documentation Driven Development
In 2021 After working on ensuring accessibility was delivered as part of the BBC’s re-branding, Gareth left the BBC to work as a co-director of AB11y.com, to focus his efforts on developing the worlds first ethical accessibility quantitative user data platform.
Please note: All links above are to the most recent versions of projects. Some have gone through update and changes. Links to older versions and other projects can be found on Gareth’s LinkedIn page https://www.linkedin.com/in/garethfordwilliams/details/projects/
