Fronteers NL at Level Level Rotterdam

We're starting the 2025 meetups in Rotterdam, hosted by Level Level. The evening kicks off with pizza, drinks, and time to connect with new and familiar faces. Then, we'll dive into recurring accessibility barriers in e-commerce and explore how embracing the web platform's native strengths is key to a solid design system.

🌍 This event will be in English 🇬🇧.

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📅 Evening Programme

• 18h00 - 🚪 Doors open & 🤝 Networking + 🍕 Food
• 19h00 - 🎤 Introduction by Fronteers NL & Level Level
• 19h20 - 🗣️ Amber Qualm & Caitlin de Rooij – "Access Denied: Recurring Accessibility Barriers in E-Commerce"
• 19h50 - ☕ ----- Break -----
• 20h10 - 🗣️ Robbert Broersma – "HTML and CSS as the Foundation of Your Design System"
• 20h40 - 🍻 Drinks & Networking
• 21h30 - 👋 End

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🗣️ Talk #1: Access denied: recurring accessibility barriers in e-commerce

For the past four years, Level Level has researched the state of accessibility of the top 15 e-commerce websites in The Netherlands. And each year, we have encountered the same - often easily fixable - accessibility barriers. What are these problems and why are we still seeing them year after year?

In this talk, Amber and Caitlin will explore these recurring issues, explaining how they impact the online shopping experience for people with disabilities and most importantly: what steps can be taken to solve them. With the European Accessibility Act coming into effect just in a few months, it is time to solve these problems once and for all!

About Amber Qualm & Caitlin de Rooij
Caitlin de Rooji works as an Accessibility Consultant at Level Level, a web agency specializing in building accessible websites. In her role, and with her background in development, she collaborates with developers from major platforms and agencies. By integrating accessibility, Caitlin ensures that the needs of all users are considered.

Amber Qualm is an Accessibility Consultant working at Level Level. With over ten years of experience in digital product design, she combines her knowledge of user experience and accessibility to help companies, designers and developers create digital products that are accessible for all users.

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🗣️ Talk #2: HTML and CSS as the foundation of your design system

When developing inclusive websites, accessible HTML and CSS are essential. That’s why the foundation of any design system should be built on robust HTML and CSS, regardless of the framework used later on.

At NL Design System, our community has spent the past years creating a variety of government websites using different frameworks, reusing and refining front-end components from one another. After all, what could be better than starting with HTML and CSS that have already been accessibility-audited and user-tested?

Along the way, we continuously learn valuable insights, which I’d love to share with you! I’ll explain how this open-source collaboration works in practice and provide you with plenty of practical tips to get things right the first time when building accessible websites.

About Robbert Broersma
Robbert is passionate about working on complex websites that are fast, flexible, low-maintenance, and scalable.
Since 2020, he has been the Design System Lead, working alongside hundreds of developers, designers, and accessibility specialists to improve digital government services. Together, they build NL Design System, an open-source, white-label design system. NL Design System is more than just a collection of components—it also provides guidelines on achieving high-quality results in your projects and developing in compliance with WCAG accessibility standards.
Robbert is also co-owner of Frameless, a technical partner for user-friendly and accessible government software and NL Design System applications.

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About Level Level
Specialist in WordPress and in web accessibility, ambitious and down to earth: that’s what defines Level Level. As a full service WordPress agency we create innovative, stable, high-end websites, webshops and applications. With the focus on an optimal user experience for all devices, our 35+ team helps our customers to achieve their online goals every day.

It’s our mission to make the internet safe, open, accessible and user friendly for everyone. We love what we do and will give our best every day to find the best solution for our customers’ challenges. Love works best when it comes from both sides. That’s why working hand in hand with our customers is at the heart of what we do. Together we go far!

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About Fronteers
Fronteers is a professional association for front-end developers in the Netherlands and Belgium. Since 2007, we have been working to promote the profession of front-end development. We organize meetups to share knowledge and connect people. To help you be the best you can be!

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Code of Conduct
Our goal is to foster an inclusive and welcoming environment. So please behave decently. If you have witnessed, or experienced any unacceptable behavior or remarks at one of our events, please reach out to someone in our team of event hosts/organisers.