I’m a global speaker with a passion for digital accessibility. I’m always thinking about new ways that we can achieve Continuous Accessibility and make it easier than ever for designers and developers to create a more inclusive web!
Melanie Sumner began building things for the web in 1997, and after all these years, it’s still her favorite thing to do. As the Product Accessibility Lead at HashiCorp, she develops accessibility strategies and offers guidance to the design system and product teams, working collaboratively to deliver inclusive, standards-compliant products.
In addition to her role at HashiCorp, Melanie is an invited expert for the W3C’s ARIA working group and co-editor of the Accessible Name and Description Computation specification, playing an active part in advancing web accessibility standards.
Melanie also writes about Continuous Accessibility and is passionate about the future of automation in accessibility testing. She works on side projects such as accessibility-focused websites like pleasefunda11y.com, which advocates for increased accessibility funding, and a11y-intro.com, a site she created to explain her work to family members. She’s also behind a11y-automation.dev, a resource that tracks potential accessibility violations and the available automation solutions.
When she needs a break, Melanie enjoys brainstorming new collective nouns for the web (collective-nouns.dev) or unwinding with a game of Stardew Valley.
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