Michael Cooper
Accessibility Working Group Co-chair at Metaverse Standards Forum
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolMichael Cooper is an accessibility leader with 25+ years shaping global digital accessibility standards, including co-editing WCAG 2.x and WAI-ARIA 1.x and helping found the web accessibility evaluation industry through work on Bobby. Based in Ottawa, he combines technical authorship and front-end development—contributing Respec migrations and maintainability improvements to high-profile W3C repos like aria-practices and wcag—with strategic leadership across standards, tooling, and community initiatives. He currently co-chairs the Metaverse Standards Forum Accessibility Working Group and leads projects that surface underserved human needs into a graph-backed Digital Accessibility Framework. Known for translating complex spec-level decisions into practical guidance and testable techniques, he bridges policy, implementation, and real-world user scenarios. Fluent in stakeholder diplomacy and distributed collaboration, he also brings a background in education and assistive-technology deployment that informs pragmatic, inclusive solutions.
14 years of coding experience
25 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Arts - BA Psychology, Bachelor of Arts - BA Psychology at University of DenverEd.M. Education, Ed.M. Education at Harvard Graduate School of Education
English, French, German, Sign languages
Github Skills (10)
accessibility10
html10
css10
ria10
wcag10
wai-aria10
documentation9
user-interface8
graphical-user-interface8
ui-design8
Programming languages (7)
Github contributions (5)
w3c/wcag
May 2013 - Jan 2023
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
Role in this project:
Accessibility Specialist
Accessibility SpecialistContributions:23 reviews, 2100 commits, 153 PRs in 9 years 10 months
Contributions summary:Michael's contributions focus on improving the accessibility of the WCAG guidelines, with commits primarily focused on editing and adding text to the guidelines. The user's work involved standardizing terminology, adding test cases, and enhancing the documentation related to specific success criteria, particularly in the areas of user interface components, pointer gestures, and text presentation. The edits show a focus on the practical application of accessibility principles in web development and design, with the goal of helping improve the user experience for people with disabilities, and improving the test procedures for compliance with WCAG standards.
a11yattributionaxeguidelineswcag
w3c/aria-practices
Apr 2014 - May 2022
WAI-ARIA Authoring Practices Guide (APG)
Role in this project:Front-end Developer
Front-end DeveloperContributions:1 review, 763 commits, 7 PRs in 8 years 2 months
Contributions summary:Michael's commits primarily focused on transforming the existing authoring practices into the Respec format. This involved significant changes to the HTML structure and the incorporation of Respec-specific configurations. These updates aimed at improving the guide's maintainability and compliance with the W3C's standards. The changes include modifications to the HTML file, suggesting a focus on content presentation and structuring.
aria-authoring-practicesapgcssauthoringwai
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