Richard Boardman
Senior Director, Product Accessibility at Zendesk
San Francisco, California, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top School
Top expert inSalesforce Development with Lightning Web Components and Heroku Integration
Richard Boardman is a Senior Director specializing in product accessibility and design systems with over 20 years of experience bridging UX research, front-end engineering, and accessibility strategy at companies like Zendesk and Salesforce. He has scaled global accessibility programs, advised product leadership on governance and trust, and led the Lightning Design System infrastructure and React component contributions that improved UI consistency and accessibility for millions of users. A PhD-trained HCI researcher, Richard combines rigorous user research with hands-on engineering—his GitHub tinkering includes concrete improvements to Salesforce’s design system and documentation. Known for translating complex regulatory and usability requirements into developer-friendly practices, he enables large engineering orgs to shift from traditional SaaS toward more inclusive, maintainable product platforms. Based in San Francisco, he brings a rare mix of academic depth, practical tooling experience, and mentorship across design and engineering teams.
11 years of coding experience
22 years of employment as a software developer
MSc Cognitive Science and Natural Language, MSc Cognitive Science and Natural Language at The University of EdinburghPhD Human-Computer Interaction, PhD Human-Computer Interaction at Imperial College London
Stackoverflow
1,268reputation
379kreached
14answers
3questions
Github Skills (24)
javascript10
css10
system-design10
ui-design10
system10
uid10
front-end-development10
html10
frontend10
react10
accessibility9
component-development9
salesforce-lightning9
sld9
salesforce8
Programming languages (7)
Github contributions (5)
salesforce-ux/design-system
Sep 2015 - Dec 2016
Salesforce Lightning Design System
Role in this project:
Front-end Developer
Front-end DeveloperContributions:2 releases, 163 commits, 2 pushes in 1 year 3 months
Contributions summary:Richard primarily contributed to the Salesforce Lightning Design System by modifying existing components and updating the site. Their work focused on refining the user interface and improving accessibility. They updated the getting started page, made adjustments to the Visualforce and Lightning platform documentation, and fixed minor code issues. The user also made updates to the video on the site and updated the downloads page.
lightning-design-systemcsslightningsalesforcesalesforce-lightning
salesforce/design-system-react
Jan 2016 - Jul 2018
Salesforce Lightning Design System for React
Role in this project:Front-end Developer
Front-end DeveloperContributions:23 commits, 1 PR in 2 years 6 months
Contributions summary:Richard primarily contributed to the React-based UI components within the Salesforce Lightning Design System. Their work focused on refining existing components by adding required properties and correcting naming conventions. They also refactored code related to icons, updating import statements to align with the project's organization. These changes improved the usability and maintainability of the design system's components.
reactlightning-design-systemjavascriptlightningsalesforce
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