David A. Kennedy's Résumé

Profile

Design leader with extensive accessibility experience on cross-functional teams, helping colleagues prevent and fix accessibility problems through design reviews, prototypes, documentation and audits. Led teams and managed designers and frontend engineers. Contributed to design systems and open source projects.

Experience

Manager of Design, Accessibility, Ad Hoc, Remote — 11/23 – Present

  • New to this role; Updates coming soon.

Managing Staff Designer, Accessibility, Ad Hoc, Remote — 5/22 – 11/23

  • Managed designers with specialties in accessibility, responsible for performance reviews and helping them grow in their careers. Interview and hire new talent for accessibility and design roles.
  • Co-authored Veteran Affairs’ first accessibility strategy for modernized VA.gov application teams. Collaboratively defined a mission, vision, and success metrics that centers disabled Veterans with 30-plus stakeholders.
  • Helped support 10-plus product teams with accessibility design reviews, audits and documentation.

Managing Senior Designer 2, Accessibility, Ad Hoc, Remote — 8/21 – 05/22

  • Managed several designers, responsible for performance reviews and helping them grow in their careers.
  • Supported six product teams as an embedded accessibility specialist. - Conducted design reviews and code audits, held pairing sessions, and created accessible prototypes to guide designers and engineers toward inclusive solutions.
  • Co-authored Ad Hoc’s Accessibility Beyond Compliance playbook including nine actionable plays, guiding government agencies toward more inclusive and equitable experiences.

Senior Designer 2, Accessibility, Ad Hoc, Remote — 2/21 – 08/21

  • Supported six product teams as an embedded accessibility specialist. Conducted design reviews and code audits, held pairing sessions, and created accessible prototypes to guide designers and engineers toward inclusive solutions.
  • Wrote accessibility documentation for design systems, and guided the accessibility approach to a themable focus style.
  • Contributed to the hiring process by grading design assignments and portfolios.
  • Contributed to business development by writing accessibility-related portions of proposals.

Senior Designer, Accessibility, Ad Hoc, Remote — 9/19 – 2/21

  • Supported six product teams as an embedded accessibility specialist. Conducted design reviews and code audits, held pairing sessions, and created accessible prototypes to guide designers and engineers toward inclusive solutions.
  • Wrote accessibility documentation for design systems.
  • Established Accessibility Champions program which led to 30-plus people participating and leveling up their knowledge in two years.
  • Created team accessibility dashboards in Jira, allowing product managers to know which accessibility defects to tackle first, resulting in more accessibility bugs getting fixed.

Design Director, Automattic, Remote — 10/18 – 09/19

Led projects related to the front-end experience on WordPress.com. Managed and mentored designers in career development. Assisted in recruiting and hiring new talent.

Team Lead, Themes, Automattic, Remote — 11/17 – 10/18

Managed and mentored designers and developers while overseeing WordPress theme projects for WordPress.com.

Frontend Developer, Automattic, Remote — 9/14 – 11/17

Developed and maintained WordPress themes for WordPress.com. Managed the premium theme program for the platform.

Interactive Designer, U.Group, Remote — 1/13 – 9/14

Developed HTML, CSS and JavaScript for consumerfinance.gov. Tested projects for WCAG and Section 508 compliance.

Online Communications Manager, The Arc, Washington, D.C. — 9/10 – 1/13

Managed the national non-profit organization’s online presence, including its website, social media profiles and email marketing.

Copy Associate, Graphik Dimensions, High Point, NC — 2/08– 7/09

Wrote product descriptions, press releases, web site copy, scripts and other miscellaneous copy.

Reporter/Copy Editor, The Observer Newspapers, New Smyrna Beach, FL — 2/06 – 11/07

Covered a variety of beats as a reporter, including sports, the hospital and features. Also served as Editor when the paper turned into a weekly. Supervised staff of three, planned content, edited copy, wrote stories and designed three-section newspaper.

Skills & Projects

Languages: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP.

Accessibility: Section 508, WCAG, JAWS, NVDA, VoiceOver, usability study technical support.

Software: Sketch, Figma, Mural, Miro.

Projects: Accessibility Weekly newsletter, WordPress Core Contributor (emeritus).

Education

Elon University, Elon, NC — M.A., Interactive Media, 2010

University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL — B.A., Journalism, 2003