Gerard Cohen
Senior Software Engineer at Atlassian
Oakland, California, United States
Summary
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SeniorGerard Cohen is a senior software engineer and accessibility leader with 13 years of experience building inclusive front-end experiences and leading cross-functional teams from Oakland, CA. He has moved between hands-on engineering and management roles at companies including Twitter, Wells Fargo, and Atlassian, shaping accessibility strategy, prototyping, and production UI work. Gerard’s open-source contributions to projects like YUI3 and the WAI-ARIA Authoring Practices Guide demonstrate deep practical expertise in ARIA, keyboard navigation, and cross-browser compatibility. He combines a developer’s attention to detail—fixing subtle show/hide behavior and mixed-state checkbox interactions—with strategic leadership that scales accessibility practices across organizations. Notably, he pairs legacy library maintenance skills with modern accessibility advocacy, making complex interfaces reliably usable for all.
13 years of coding experience
19 years of employment as a software developer
Spanish
Github Skills (13)
html10
accessibility10
css10
ria10
uitest10
javascript10
yui10
ui-testing10
wai-aria10
accordion10
checkbox9
combobox9
nodejs7
Programming languages (4)
Github contributions (5)
w3c/aria-practices
Jun 2017 - Jul 2018
WAI-ARIA Authoring Practices Guide (APG)
Role in this project:
Front-end Developer
Front-end DeveloperContributions:10 commits, 12 PRs, 25 comments in 1 year
Contributions summary:Gerard primarily contributed to enhancing the accessibility and functionality of the accordion and combobox examples within the WAI-ARIA Authoring Practices Guide. Their work involved implementing keyboard navigation, fixing CSS bugs for improved browser compatibility (MS Edge), and addressing issues related to multiple expansions and click targets. They also made updates to ensure the proper behavior of mixed state checkboxes, demonstrating a focus on creating accessible and user-friendly web components.
aria-authoring-practicesapgcssauthoringwai
yui/yui3
Mar 2013 - Apr 2013
A library for building richly interactive web applications.
Role in this project:Front-end Developer
Front-end DeveloperContributions:7 commits in 21 days
Contributions summary:Gerard primarily focused on enhancing the user interface and improving the accessibility of the YUI3 library. Their work involved modifying existing tests and creating new ones to ensure the correct behavior of show/hide and toggle functionality for UI elements. The user's commits directly addressed the implementation of the `hidden` attribute and the `display` style property for node visibility, ensuring compatibility and proper behavior. Additionally, they updated documentation and examples to reflect the changes made.
web-applicationsweb-componentsjstreejavascriptfundamentals
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