Overview
NASA’s digital ecosystem serves millions of visitors around the world—delivering real-time access to discoveries, missions, and multimedia storytelling that inspire curiosity about space and science.
During his contract with NASA, William Beeler contributed to the ongoing modernization and optimization of the agency’s flagship web platforms, ensuring they remained fast, accessible, and resilient at scale. His work supported both NASA.gov, the agency’s primary public information hub, and Plus.NASA.gov, an immersive storytelling platform featuring interactive, long-form editorial content.
Role & Contributions
As part of a distributed, multi-agency development team, William focused on advancing NASA’s content infrastructure through:
- Performance & Reliability: Maintaining and extending WordPress and Drupal codebases to improve publishing workflows and enhance site responsiveness.
- Accessibility Compliance: Strengthening compliance with WCAG 2.1 standards through structural refinements, ARIA labeling, and a combination of automated and manual accessibility audits.
- Security & Federal Standards: Implementing security updates and performance improvements to ensure compliance with federal IT and Section 508 accessibility requirements.
- Cross-Platform Consistency: Supporting integration across NASA-managed domains through the Human Design System (HDS) for a unified user experience.
- Collaboration: Partnering with NASA’s media, editorial, and engineering teams to deliver a stable, high-performance visitor experience across multiple digital properties.
Technical Environment
WordPress / Drupal / PHP / JavaScript (ES6) / React / HDS Design System / MySQL / Git / WP VIP / axe DevTools / Lighthouse / Gravity Forms
Impact
- Achieved a 40% reduction in accessibility violations on NASA.gov through targeted design system and code-level improvements.
- Developed modular enhancements to WordPress themes and plugins adopted across multiple NASA-managed domains.
- Supported the evolution of Plus.NASA.gov, enabling smoother performance and greater editorial flexibility for NASA’s long-form multimedia storytelling.
Outcome
NASA’s web ecosystem continues to stand as a benchmark for accessible, public-facing federal websites. William’s contributions helped strengthen the foundation of these digital properties—ensuring reliability, inclusivity, and performance for millions of visitors exploring space online.
Disclaimer
This project was completed while serving as a Software Developer III contractor supporting NASA web properties. The information presented reflects William Beeler’s professional contributions and does not represent the official views of NASA or the U.S. Government.