About

I’m a digital accessibility specialist, instructor, developer, program manager, and tech enthusiast with a passion for creating inclusive experiences. I am currently employed as an IT Accessibility Specialist at Toronto Metropolitan University, where I enable the community with the resources and guidance to create a more inclusive digital environment for all learners, faculty, staff and the general public. I also founded and lead the development of Sa11y, an open source accessibility checker designed for content authors.

Based in Toronto, Canada. 📍

Featured projects

Sa11y - An accessibility checker geared towards content authors that visually highlights common accessibility and usability issues.
Contrast Report - Straightforward colour contrast checker with Picture-in-picture (PiP) mode.
Gifa11y - Customizable vanilla javascript plugin that easily adds accessible play/pause buttons to animated GIFs.
Contrast checking Google Sheet - Google Sheet that compares the hexcodes between two colours for contrast with colour preview.

Education & designations

Certified Professional in Web Accessibility (CPWA) by the International Association of Accessibility Professionals.
Open Water Diver PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors).
Bachelor's in Business Technology Management (BComm) with a minor in marketing from Toronto Metropolitan University.

Skills

Conducted training and delivered presentations on diverse digital accessibility topics to over a thousand individuals, including developers, students, educators, and communication and marketing professionals.
Experienced in front-end development using HTML, SCSS/CSS, JavaScript, PHP, and more.
Highly knowledgeable in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2, Accessibility Conformance Reports (ACR), and VPATs.
Skilled in accessibility testing for websites, web applications, and mobile applications using various tools and linters.
Experienced with various assistive technologies and software, including VoiceOver, JAWS, NVDA, ZoomText, Dragon NaturallySpeaking, and accessibility features on MacOS, iOS, Windows and Android.
User interface and interaction design.
Proficient in creating and designing accessible documents, including accessible PDFs.
Skilled in creating accessible websites and tools.

Teaching

Continuing Education Contract Lecturer. Co-teaching Accessibility for Graphic Communications (CGCM 740) at The G. Raymond Chang School of Continuing Education, Toronto Metropolitan University. September 2022 - December 2023.
Expert Assessor. CURV Making Word Documents Accessible at The G. Raymond Chang School of Continuing Education, Toronto Metropolitan University. October 2022 - March 2024.

Publications

Adam Chaboryk. 2022. Creating an open source, customizable accessibility checker for content authors. In Proceedings of the 19th International Web for All Conference (W4A '22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 6, 1–2.

Awards

Julia Hanigsberg Make Your Mark Staff Award (2022) / Toronto Metropolitan University
President's Blue and Gold Award of Excellence (2021) / Team award / Toronto Metropolitan University

Speaking

Building the course syllabus into a cornerstone of accessible teaching. University of Guelph Accessibility Conference (Virtual). Co-presented with Michelle Schwartz. May 2022.
Accessibility: The missing ingredient towards better usability, security and privacy. Ontario Higher Education Information Technology (OHEIT). Toronto Metropolitan University (Virtual). May 2022.
Redesigning Ryerson.ca: Strategies for implementing web accessibility in an enterprise content management system.
- University of Guelph Accessibility Conference. May 2018.
- IT Conference at Toronto Metropolitan University. June 2017.

Talks about Sa11y

Sa11y & Editoria11y: Straightforward content accessibility at scale. HighEdWeb Accessibility Summit. USA (Virtual). Co-presented with John Jameson, Princeton University. July 2024.
To infinity and beyond (TMU); the power of open source and digital accessibility. Canadian Higher Education Information Technology (CANHEIT). Halifax, Canada. June 2024.
To Infinity and Beyond (TMU); Latest Updates with Sa11y. IT Conference, Toronto Metropolitan University (Virtual). May 2024.
Meet Sa11y 3.0, the latest and greatest version of the accessibility quality assurance assistant (...not powered by AI!) IT Conference, Toronto Metropolitan University (Virtual). May 2023.
Sa11y meets WordPress. Poster session. HighEdWeb Accessibility Summit. USA (Virtual). July 2022.
Sa11y & Editoria11y: straightforward content accessibility at scale. #PSEWEB. Hosted at McGill University (Hybrid). Co-presented with John Jameson, Princeton University. July 2022.
Creating an open source, customizable accessibility checker for content authors. Web4All Conference (Virtual). April 2022.
Meet Sa11y: the accessibility quality assurance assistant.
- Ontario Higher Education Information Technology (OHEIT). Toronto Metropolitan University (Virtual). May 2022.
- HighEdWeb Accessibility Summit. USA (Virtual). June 2021.
- Canadian Higher Education IT Conference (CANHEIT). Concordia University (Virtual). June 2021.
- University of Guelph Accessibility Conference (Virtual). May 2021.

Connect

Connect with me on LinkedIn
Find my code on GitHub
Send me an email at [email protected]