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Baruch Hashem, blessed is the name ב״ה

Steve
Chabassol

Creative technologist at the intersection of design, front-end engineering, and user advocacy. Twenty years building accessible web systems, from Carnegie Mellon to Dell.

Expertise

Accessibility

WCAG, NVDA, JAWS, VoiceOver, inclusive design, audit, remediation, training, documentation

AI-augmented work

Claude, Devin, Snyk, AI SDLC, spec-driven development (SDD)

Design and craft

Typography, layout, interaction and motion, UX and UI, design systems, information architecture, content strategy, branding, logo and identity design, Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator)

Engineering

HTML, CSS, JavaScript, prototyping in code, SVG and CSS animation, GSAP, A/B experimentation, CMS development and templating, performance tuning

Experience

Dell Technologies

Remote

Dell runs large-scale A/B experiments across B2B and B2C storefronts in many regions, including Japan and Europe. I build tests with analysts, product managers, and behavioral scientists.

Senior Software Engineer

2022 to present

  • XPS sold out in two countries and drew Reuters and Ars Technica coverage. Led front-end implementation of the embargoed global relaunch, turning an agency's motion designs into production experiences and learning GSAP on a compressed timeline.
  • Built and launched dozens of A/B experiments across about six regions, holding them to CSS-first, defensive, fast code. Shaped the tests too: researched e-commerce best practices, devised test ideas, and made UI and UX decisions while designs took shape.
  • Co-chaired Dell's global Experience Design Summit: 500+ attendees and 50+ speakers from every region, livestreamed. Planned sessions and helped build the site.
  • Converted the team's code review skills into a shared, accessibility-aware agentic workspace that nearly a dozen engineers now use. Tuned it to our code and light on tokens; a colleague is extending it into CI/CD automation.
  • Established the team's accessibility process for experimentation, adapted from Dell's guidelines. Researched scanners and CI/CD tooling, set required and recommended training, and wrote the rule that protects test validity: a variant never fixes an inaccessible control unless accessibility is what the test measures.
  • Co-invented a media file retrieval method and AI-driven UX workflow. Dell filed a U.S. patent application, pending.
  • Raised the team's capacity by mentoring junior engineers on advanced CSS, defensive JavaScript, and accessibility, teaching through coaching, documentation, and peer review, and rewriting onboarding documentation with new coding exercises.

Carnegie Mellon University

Pittsburgh, PA

Carnegie Mellon runs a decentralized web ecosystem: hundreds of college, department, and campaign sites. I shaped its web brand and crafted its web design and accessibility standards.

User Interface Developer

2017 to 2022

  • Wrote CMU's web accessibility standards, built on research, audits, and conference learnings. Still published today.
  • Architected the responsive CMS templates, authoring tools, and brand standards that more than 250 college, department, and campaign sites ran on, with thousands of staff publishing pages; a design system before the term became common.
  • Translated CMU's print brand guidelines into web standards and made the web color decisions. Chose Open Sans for the web; the creative director then used it in print and the university made it official.
  • Became the point person for web design and development as the marketing department's design team grew.
  • Set the direction for the homepage design, built with a fellow developer. Codified CMU's wordmark square as the web brand mark.
  • Designed and built template, authoring, and functionality improvements from the CMS's Agile backlog of user requests.
  • Audited finalist CMS vendors hands-on with a fellow developer and gave the university's decision-makers an assessment that influenced the migration.
  • Redesigned CMS templates and collaborated on a migration to move ~250 outdated sites to a new design and authoring experience. Coordinated rolling launches and regression testing over months, causing a seamless transition.
  • Co-led workshops with the Office of Accessibility, training staff on accessibility and modern web standards.

Front-End Developer

2011 to 2017

  • Redesigned the homepage and top pages as marketing's only web designer, owning design, code, and accessibility.
  • Designed and built responsive marketing sites for key university campaigns.
  • Built and maintained the email newsletter templates used across the institution.

Assistant Web Designer

2007 to 2011

  • Built the icon system and interface for CMU's first iOS app.
  • Shot and curated the photography running on the university homepage.

Volunteer

Manifest Ministries

Pittsburgh, PA

Manifest Ministries is the nonprofit teaching ministry of Reverend W. Joseph Stump. It publishes his teaching as books.

Creative Director, Board Member

2020 to present

  • Own the design and publishing of the ministry's books end to end, three so far: cover, typography, interior layout, and photography.
  • Built a Claude skill that turns collections of messy Word manuscripts into clean Markdown, ready for layout, so a draft reaches the author in under an hour.
  • Defined the brand guidelines, color scheme and typographic style, and held them across the book series and every other material.
  • Design marketing assets, signage, business cards, and the website, including banners for the book kickoff event.

Proof

See my case studies for more about cmu.edu redesigns, the Dell XPS relaunch, accessibility standards, and experiments running on Dell's storefronts.

Browse my artsy pieces and creative endeavors.

Education

  • Bachelor of Humanities and Arts, Creative Writing and Music Technology, 2020

    Carnegie Mellon University

  • Associate of Science, Multimedia, 2006

    Pittsburgh Technical College