My name is Hidde de Vries, accessibility standards specialist at Logius (part of the Dutch government). I would appreciate your support of my running for the W3C's Advisory Board.

I fell in love with the web ever since I built my first website in high school, almost 20 years ago. What a cool platform to build for! Since then, I worked professionally as a web developer and accessibility specialist, often building bridges between these fields.

At the W3C, I've been a member of the Team (at WAI, 2019-2022), where I worked on accessibility guidance, authoring tool accesibility, the WCAG Report Tool and the ATAG Report Tool. I'm currently a participant in the Open UI Community Group, various accessibility-related Working Groups and the Web Sustainability Interest Group.

If elected, I want to:

• help improve what engagement with the AB looks like, by doing more outreach to Members and the wider community, to ensure their input is represented in our advice, and by working to find consensus on governance issues between Board, TAG, Members and groups.
• make W3C more attractive; people go to the W3C for web standardisation today, but we can reach more potential if we improve onboarding. I want to find out what stops people from getting started or engaging with our work and use that to make improvements.
• bring fresh perspective on the future; though I can't say I'm new to the W3C community, I am new to most governance aspects of it. My hope is this fresh perspective can be an asset to an AB that is orienting towards a new identity and mission.
• advocate for users, the primary constituents of the web. Almost too obvious to call out, as users are central to the W3C vision, and who else would we advocate for? In practice, though, user needs around accessibility, internationalisation and privacy are easily overlooked. They require matching up (deep) technical specifics with user needs. I want to use my experience with both to help improve the process.

What I'd like to bring to the AB, in no particular order:

• specialism in web accessibility (for long) and web sustainability (as of recently). Also a fast learner happy to dive into things I'm not specialised in.
• worked in a broad range of sectors that use and need the web: public sector, including government, a browser vendor and an authoring tool vendor.
• proven record of communicating about standards development to tech communities, the web developer community in particular (see my blog and talks). Also co-organised developer conferences.
• previous experience at W3C, as an Invited Expert, Member and Team.
• hands-on experience and deep technical knowledge of web development
• background in Philosophy and (briefly) AI, meaning I could bring a humanities perspective and not just a technological view, and that I am trained to view issues from many angles.

Any questions: feel free to reach out via W3C Slack or email me on hidde@hiddedevries.nl.

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Originally posted as Running for the AB on Hidde's blog.

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