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Jan Maarten – Design Engineering, Accessibility, and Privacy

Hello, I'm Jan. I'm a design engineer, accessibility specialist, privacy advocate, writer, and future hermit.

I help teams build better stuff. After decades of making inaccessible crap, I write docs people read, build tools that make them faster, and create workflows that get designers and developers on the same page. Mostly annotation kits and hot takes.

Creations

GitHub Annotation Toolkit
github/annotation-toolkit

GitHub Annotation Toolkit

The most comprehensive annotation library to help organize your design canvas, diagram UI anatomy, and annotate accessibility details for web and mobile. Accessibility specialization not required.
CVS Accessibility Annotation Kits
Figma Community

CVS Accessibility Annotation Kits

I led the creation of two annotations kits for CVS Health Inclusive Design. Built with accessibility specialists in mind, they've become the second most-used annotation libraries for Figma.

Writing

A pair of cute little toys of a dumpster fire and the This Is Fine dog against a background of flames.

2025 Year in Review

This past year has been a lot. I've probably said this every year for the past decade and it's been true every time. It's already true of 2026 and it's only been a week. Everything happens so much and I wish it wouldn't.
Personal
17 min read
An inbox app icon showing a badge with 6,753 unreads

Newsletters that regularly hit my inbox these days

A curated list of newsletters and how I get them without my inbox filling up.
Writing
7 min read
Some abstract blue shapes around text that reads: Design system annotations, cautionary tales, how NOT to integrate annotations and design systems

How NOT to integrate annotations and design systems

While building a new set of design system annotations for GitHub, we found some novel ways to enhance Primer with annotations. Not all of those experiments worked out.
Annotations
7 min read
Some abstract blue shapes contoured with a few git-lines behind text that reads, Design system annotations, part 2, Advanced methods of annotating components.

Advanced methods of annotating components (GitHub.blog)

Design system annotations, part 2 — How to build custom annotations for your design system components or use Figma’s Code Connect to help capture important accessibility details before development.
Annotations
10 min read
Some abstract blue shapes contoured with a few git-lines behind text that reads, Design system annotations, part one, How accessibility gets left out of components.

How accessibility gets left out of components (GitHub.blog)

Design system annotations, part 1 — The Accessibility Design team [at GitHub] created a set of annotations to bridge the gaps that design systems alone can’t fix and proactively addresses accessibility issues within Primer components.
Annotations
9 min read
A ridiculous synthwave image that says oh no they made me do Blogger Tag. It looks like the old Lazer Tag branding from the 80s.

Tag, you're it

In which I share my thoughts on writing as well as this blog and its future.
Writing
5 min read
A large no-entry symbol in the foreground, with five vintage wind-up tin robot toys in the background.

Good sabotage for bad robots (Updated)

A thorough list of AI crawlers you can block on our your website, as well as a few other choice methods to confound the robots who want to steal everything you've ever published online.
Privacy
6 min read
A computer desk and knocked over chair in a dark room. The monitor has two robot arms extending, grabbing at Polywork badges.

How platforms prey on our longing to be known

An up close and personal look into why we should be extremely careful when sharing about ourselves online, no matter how shiny an app or network might be.
Privacy
38 min read
Parody cover of the film Sex, Lies, and Videotape. The actors have been replaced by sock puppets with big googly eyes.

Socks, lies, and accessibility

Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) is around the corner. Looking back at last year, I found some troubling things people in this field should be aware of. Because they're likely to be repeated.
Accessibility
9 min read
A bookmark card in a Ghost post. A focus outline can be seen around the non-interactive text description of the link.

Fixing keyboard focus on Ghost bookmark cards

Since moving this site to Ghost(Pro), I've found very few gripes with it. It's not perfect, but it beats platforms like Medium or WordPress by a mile. There are only two things that really bug me.
Accessibility
3 min read
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