About
Hi, my name is Matt Begent and I'm a senior front-end web developer working in Bristol (UK) who loves designing and coding cool, accessible and unique websites. In my day job I work on websites for large brands such as Dyson, Sky, Honda, Wolves, Spurs, Sainbury's, RAC, Babcock, PHS, and Picturehouse Cinemas, using technologies such as HTML, CSS, Git, React, Angular, TypeScript and JavaScript.
You can read my coding blog Codeboosh and view some of my open source projects on github.
Accessibility Reporter
About Accessibility Reporter
Accessibility Reporter is an open source project that I created for accessibility testing in Umbraco. It tests your content pages against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), highlights issues and helps you to make your website more accessible.
umbraCoffee
I recently appeared as a guest on the Umbraco podcast umbraCoffee where I demonstrated my Umbraco package Accessibility Reporter.
View umbraCoffee appearance on YouTube
Umbraad 2023
At Umbraad 2023 I gave a talk called "Automated Accessibility Testing Within Umbraco", in which I talked about Accessibility Reporter and gave a live demonstration.
Useful links
Accessibility Reporter for Umbraco website
Skills
Accessibility
I like to build accessible websites, as I am a nice human being and believe that the web should be available to everyone. In my day job I audit and make websites that adhere to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2. I have also created a tool for auditing websites for accessibility called Accessibility Reporter.
HTML and CSS
I keep up to date with the web latest standards and I also know how to support legacy browsers. For example, I worked on a project for Sainbury's which involved developing a responsive website that also supported IE6. My naming convention of choice is BEM. At work I use CSS variables and SASS, however I have used LESS a lot in the past. I am a stickler for naming conventions and hate nested CSS.
JavaScript
I love TypeScript and have used it for years, here is an article I wrote a few years ago on TypeScript. I have experience of moving large codebases from JavaScript to TypeScript. I also have great knowledge of plain JavaScript.
I have experience using Angular (2+) and React on large scale projects.
Umbraco
I am an Umbraco certified professional and I work on the front-end of Umbraco websites for small and large clients. I have appeared on an episode umbraCoffee and I gave a talk at Umbraad 2023.
Node.js
For personal projects I often use Node.js, because it's just brilliant! Outside of using it for task runners, I've also, used it on a few production websites such as Street Eater, an internal tool for Sky and my Accessibility Reporter project.
Mentoring
I have experience mentoring junior members of the team and helping them to progress their careers.