What is a fractional CTO, and do I need one?

A fractional CTO is a senior technical leader who works part-time across one or more companies, typically one to two days a week. You likely need one if your team is shipping software but has no senior engineering voice in the room — for hiring, architecture, security, roadmap and tough technical decisions.

How much does a website accessibility audit cost?

A small marketing-site WCAG 2.2 audit typically starts around £1,500, with larger product audits in the £4,000–£10,000 range depending on the number of templates, components and user journeys. Every engagement includes a prioritised issue list and a remediation plan you can hand directly to your developers.

What is WCAG 2.2 and does my site need to comply?

WCAG 2.2 is the current Web Content Accessibility Guidelines standard. In the UK, public-sector sites are legally required to meet WCAG 2.2 AA under the Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations 2018. Private-sector sites are expected to be accessible under the Equality Act 2010 and increasingly under the European Accessibility Act from June 2025.

How long does a website performance audit take?

A typical performance audit takes one to two weeks: lab testing against Core Web Vitals, field-data review from real users, render-path analysis and a written report with prioritised fixes. Urgent engagements can be completed in a few days if the site is small and the issues are obvious.

Do you work with teams outside the UK?

Yes. chrimes.dev is remote-first and based in Leeds, UK, working across UK and European time zones. Most engagements happen over video calls, shared docs and pull requests. I travel to clients in person for kick-offs and workshops when it helps.

What technology stacks do you specialise in?

Modern web stacks — Next.js, React, TypeScript, Node.js, and headless content systems. I have deep experience with design systems (including the NHS and GOV.UK patterns), accessibility tooling and performance engineering. For audits I’m stack-agnostic.

How do engagements typically start?

A short free call to understand the problem, a written proposal with scope, price and timeline, and a signed agreement before any work begins. Audits are fixed-price; retainers and fractional CTO work are billed monthly.

Software Development

Manage Your Screening (MAYS)

Lead UI Developer on the Manage Your Screening team — making NHS cancer screening easier to understand, easier to access, and easier to manage.

Client: NHS England
Role: Lead UI Developer
Year: 2025
Duration: 12+ months

In short

Rebuilding the citizen-facing experience of managing cancer screening invitations and appointments.
Accessibility-first, on the NHS Design System, with user research baked into every sprint.
Work that reaches millions of people and tens of thousands of screening staff.

The brief

Cancer screening saves lives — but the experience of managing invitations and appointments was inconsistent, hard to navigate, and often inaccessible to the people who most needed it. NHS England's Manage Your Screening (MAYS) programme exists to fix that: one clear, accessible, modern service that participants and clinicians can both rely on.

My brief, as Lead UI Developer, was to own the front-end quality of the service as we moved through private and public beta — the code, the accessibility, the design-system adherence, and the bar we held each new feature to.

Approach

Working as part of a multidisciplinary team: product manager, delivery manager, user researchers, content designers, interaction designers, engineers.

Shipping to the GOV.UK Service Standard, with each release informed by usability research with real participants.

Building journeys on the NHS Design System — making sure every new pattern we proposed was put through the design-system governance rather than forked.

Running manual accessibility testing (screen readers, voice control, switch access) alongside automated checks, so we caught real issues real users would have hit.

What I delivered

Full citizen-facing screening management journeys — invite, book, reschedule, opt-out, results
New NHS Design System components proposed back to the wider design-system community
Accessibility assessments at WCAG 2.2 AA, including manual assistive-tech walkthroughs
Front-end build and CI pipeline improvements

Outcomes

A screening management experience that works for assistive-tech users out of the box
A codebase and component set that later teams can pick up without a steep ramp-in
Patterns contributed back to the NHS Design System

Software DevelopmentKainos (for NHS England), 2026

NHS Online service

Helping build NHS Online — a new national digital hospital launching in England by 2027, connecting patients to specialists via the NHS App and easing elective waiting times.

Read case study

Software DevelopmentNHS England, 2024

Cohort Manager for cancer screening

Helping breast-screening staff identify, correct and verify the demographic details of eligible participants, so the right people are invited at the right time.