Performance and Accessibility

The Problem

The UMBC.edu homepage had a mobile Largest Contentful Paint of 11.2 seconds. The main content was buried inside a JavaScript bundle, unused CSS was shipping to every page, and scripts blocked rendering. On mobile, the page was effectively unusable for the first several seconds.

What I Did

• Moved the LCP paragraph out of the JavaScript bundle and inlined it as critical HTML content
• Deferred non-essential JavaScript and lazy-loaded below-fold images
• Purged unused CSS by updating Tailwind content globs and removing dead styles
• Audited and optimized third-party script loading order

Results

These scores are across the pages built on my custom WordPress theme. The accessibility work connects to a broader commitment: I gave a talk at the CASE District II Conference in New York in 2023 on "Accessibility in Digital Spaces", covering how we approach accessibility compliance and culture at UMBC.