Performance and Accessibility

Context

User-facing pages were growing in size, impacting time-to-interactive and accessibility scores.

Problem

Slow initial loads and inconsistent accessibility checks made it hard to meet quality benchmarks.

Goals

• Reduce initial load time across priority pages.
• Enforce accessibility standards throughout delivery.
• Introduce repeatable performance checks.

Responsibilities

• Audited performance bottlenecks and accessibility gaps.
• Implemented code splitting, lazy loading, and caching.
• Introduced Lighthouse and Web Vitals gates in CI.

Constraints

• Large, shared codebase with multiple owners.
• Need to improve performance without breaking UX.
• Accessibility fixes had to align with design system rules.

Approach

• Prioritized top routes based on traffic and conversion impact.
• Reduced bundle sizes and optimized assets.
• Documented accessibility checklists and testing flow.

Solution

• Shipped performance optimizations with measurable gains.
• Standardized a11y linting and manual QA checks.
• Created dashboards to track ongoing quality scores.

Results

• Improved initial load time by 35% on key routes.
• Reached consistent WCAG 2.1 AA compliance.
• Maintained 90+ Lighthouse scores in production.

Learnings

• Performance work is most effective when baked into CI.
• Accessibility improves faster with shared team checklists.
• Small wins compound when tracked and shared.