Michael Whapples
Senior Software Developer at American Printing House for the Blind
England, United Kingdom
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolMichael Whapples is a Senior Software Developer with 15+ years of hands-on experience in Java and Python and early adopter experience in Kotlin since 2016, currently leading technical work on BrailleBlaster at the American Printing House for the Blind. He combines systems-level attention to stability—evidenced by contributions to the liblouis braille translator and NVDA Java Access Bridge improvements—with practical command-line tooling, having developed a Python BRF-to-e-Braille converter. Comfortable as both individual contributor and technical lead, he bridges accessibility-focused product work with deep engineering practices like refactoring and logging hardening. Michael also pursues continued learning in AI via a Udacity Deep Learning Nanodegree and holds a postgraduate diploma in computer science, reflecting a mix of academic rigor and applied problem-solving.
15 years of coding experience
2 years of employment as a software developer
Post Graduate Diploma, Computer Science, Post Graduate Diploma, Computer Science at The Open UniversityBSC, Physics with Theoretical Physics, BSC, Physics with Theoretical Physics at University of NottinghamJava, SQL and Bash shell scripting training., Java, SQL and Bash shell scripting training. at FDM AcademyNanoDegree, Deep learning, NanoDegree, Deep learning at Udacity
Github Skills (7)
c1710
logging10
braille10
c1110
accessibility9
command-line8
cross-platform7
Programming languages (8)
Github contributions (5)
liblouis/liblouis
May 2014 - Dec 2016
Open-source braille translator and back-translator.
Role in this project:
Backend Developer
Backend DeveloperContributions:10 commits, 13 comments, 3 issues in 2 years 8 months
Contributions summary:Michael primarily focused on refactoring and improving the logging functionality within the liblouis library. Their contributions include moving logging code into a dedicated file, updating function exports, and fixing issues related to null terminators. The user also made adjustments to the compile translation table and corrected an instance of a printf statement, changing it to a logging call for better application behavior. This points towards the user working on code stability and improving system-level operations.
blindbrailletranslationcross-platformaccessibility
aphtech/Convert2EBRL
Jan 2024 - Mar 2025
Contributions:3 releases, 71 pushes, 3 branches in 1 year 2 months
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