Welcome to my website

Hello, I am Nicki Berry and I am a Head of Accessibility for the Civil Service.

Since August 2022, I've been an Accessible Document Specialist, certified by the International Association of Accessibility Professionals (IAAP). I've also recently (August 2024) passed the Certified Professional in Accessibility Core Competencies (CPACC) exam. If you click on my badges, they will take you to the certification, where you can verify each credential.

My website is intended to provide information and guidance on disability, accessibility and particularly digital accessibility. I have been building this over several years, as my own knowledge has grown. If you want to find out more about me and my professional background, please visit the About Me page.

Before we even begin to think about accessibility, it is important to have a background understanding of disability. Culturally, disability is understood and treated differently across the world. I am UK-based and make no apology for reflecting this in my website. I largely adopt the social model of disability and prefer identity-first language. You can read more on the Disability page.

It is also important to know about assistive technologies and how disabled people use them to access digital content. You can read more on the Assistive technology page.

The guidance pages are an ever evolving work in progress. I aim to help you make your digital content accessible, whether that is a webpage, a document or any other content. I work full time, and produce all this guidance in my own time, so it is slow progress. Sometimes, the guidance will be related to my own study and exam preparation. At the moment (2025), I am preparing to take the IAAP Web Accessibility Specialist exam, so I have been looking in more depth at things like ATAG, ARIA and JavaScript.

My blog is a mixture of my thoughts on digital and physical accessibility, as well as personal stories and experiences. All opinions are my own and I try to share thoughts which may benefit others or challenge people's views on disability.