About me

My name is Hidde de Vries. I am a freelance front-end, accessibility and design systems specialist. Previously, I worked for organisations including the Dutch government, W3C (WAI), Sanity.io and Mozilla.

I am a generalist with ~two decades of experience building websites. My focus has been mostly on end users: web accessibility, performance and usability.

As former W3C Staff, I know things about (accessibility) standards making. I'm also a certified accessibility specialist (CPWA). My other interests are design systems (worked on them on and off since they were called pattern libraries) and developer relations (had some official and various unofficial developer relations roles).

For the last five years, more of my work has been about teaching and communications. From dozens of workshops about accessibility, CSS and design systems to accessibility audits, conference talks and developer and public relations. I like making stuff comprehensible. To specialists, generalists or both.

Background

In 2009, I started out studying Artificial Intelligence, but ended up getting a bachelor (in Utrecht, NL) and master’s (in Bristol, UK) degree in Philosophy. How it relates to front-end work? Abstractions!

Interviews

Awards

Fronteers

From 2008 to the first quarter of 2017, I was a volunteer at Fronteers, organising conferences, meet-ups and workshops. From 2014 to 2016 I was also board member, in the last year even a treasurer.

Headshot of Hidde