portfolio · craft notes · 2026

Web engineering, carefully— for fields where details matter.

I'm Jared Brannen. For fifteen years I've been building accessibility‑first, HIPAA‑conscious, secure‑by‑default web applications for healthcare practices, nonprofits, and mission‑driven teams. This is my personal portfolio. My commercial practice is Digital Dimensions↗.

--accessibility --hipaa-conscious --php8 --mysql --react --apis --llm-integration --rag --no-bloat
see the work → hire via Digital Dimensions ↗ career timeline ↓
~/jared — zsh ● connected
jared@workshop :~$ whoami Jared Brannen — web engineer. jared@workshop :~$ locate --self loc=Marietta, GA · serving clients nationwide · remote‑first. jared@workshop :~$ uptime since=late‑90s · shipping the web since the Lycos era · ~15y 5mo. jared@workshop :~$ cat ./focus.txt accessibility · HIPAA‑conscious architecture · LLM integration · clean APIs · long‑lived systems. jared@workshop :~$ ./status --now available · booking Q2 2026 · BAAs on file. jared@workshop :~$
Portrait of Jared Brannen, a developer with short brown hair, a beard, glasses, and a navy jacket over a light shirt.
jared brannen owner · engineer
practice

The front door for commercial work.

This portfolio is where you meet the engineer. When you're ready to hire one — a project build, a WCAG 2.2 AA audit, a HIPAA‑conscious integration, an AI feature that won't embarrass your compliance officer — the practice is Digital Dimensions.

impact · in production

What ships tends to matter.

A few numbers drawn from systems currently running. Not vanity — these are the shapes of the jobs I take.

400+
organizations on one platform
$2M+
grants distributed
800+
active LMS learners
10k/mo
transactional emails shipped
WCAG
2.2 AA conformance
15y+
shipping the web
whoami

A developer who learned the web from the inside.

I started building websites as a teenager, back when Lycos and Yahoo dominated search and viewing source was how you learned anything. I stopped for college, came back after, and haven't really left.

My degree is in Economics — Kennesaw State, 2007, IT applications emphasis — which turned out to be the right training for what I actually do: modeling systems, reasoning about incentives, and watching for the feedback loops that break things quietly.

After a PHP / MySQL certificate at KSU's continuing ed program in 2013, I spent a decade as a webmaster at two Colorado‑based healthcare service providers. I rebuilt ten department sites into three, consolidated an entire subsidiary family under one marketing site, doubled traffic during my tenure, and stood up the first HIPAA‑compliant intake application my clients had ever had. I learned, in that decade, what happens when the details are actually on the line — and why the word I keep reaching for when I describe the work is care.

Today I run Digital Dimensions as an independent practice. Same work, scoped better, with honest pricing and real handover.

work · case studies

A few engagements, with their details left in.

Anonymized by client convention — but the systems are real, running, and auditable. Each one below is either live in production or was at the time of handover.

case 01 · flagship

Multi‑jurisdictional service request platform.

hipaa service management multi‑tenant wcag 2.2 aa php · mysql
problem
A statewide developmental‑disability services network needed to manage service requests across 400+ provider organizations and multiple jurisdictions, with sensitive health‑related data routing between agencies that had never shared a system before.
approach
Built from the ground up in PHP 8 / MySQL, with HIPAA safeguards architected from the first line — encryption in transit and at rest, role‑based access, minimum‑necessary data collection, granular audit logging, and BAA‑ready vendor selection. Designed keyboard‑first because case workers live in their shortcuts; tested with NVDA and VoiceOver before anything shipped.
constraints
Operates across state lines under layered privacy regimes; must export audit‑ready evidence on demand; must remain usable on whatever hardware a county office last purchased.
400+orgs in production
45%engagement gain vs legacy
2.2 AAWCAG conformance
0audit findings to date
engaged via digitaldimensions.us
case 02

Grants administration system with a clean paper trail.

financial trackingworkflowaudit
problem
A services foundation was distributing millions in grants to local healthcare and service providers with spreadsheet workflows and no real audit trail — the sort of setup that works right up until it doesn't.
approach
Custom intake → review → approval → disbursement pipeline, with reviewer assignment routing, document versioning, financial reporting, and full audit trail stamped at every transition. Exportable evidence packets for annual reviews so their auditors got what they wanted in the shape they wanted it.
$2M+distributed
500+applications processed
AAWCAG conformance
case 03

Accessible LMS for healthcare certification.

trainingaccessibilitycertification
problem
A healthcare training operation was running certification on a platform that failed WCAG audits and couldn't produce compliance reports that auditors would actually accept.
approach
Rebuilt from scratch: course authoring, progress tracking, certification issuance, automated compliance reporting. Screen‑reader‑first interaction patterns; offline‑tolerant progress saves for spotty rural connections; print‑ready certificates you could actually print.
800+active learners
200%completion lift
2.2 AAWCAG
case 04 · newer

AI‑assisted intake triage — with the guardrails you'd hope for.

ai · llm rag hipaa‑aware workflow
problem
A nonprofit was hand‑routing 50+ applications per day to the right reviewer queue. Intake was the bottleneck; turnaround stretched to days when the inbox got loud.
approach
RAG pipeline over their own policy documents and prior decisions, with a frontier‑model classifier that suggests the correct queue with a confidence score. Low‑confidence routes escalate to a human rather than guessing. Every decision — prompt, retrieved context, response, confidence — is logged for audit. BAA in place before a single PHI field was touched.
why care
"Just plug an LLM into it" is how you end up with a liability. The routing decisions aren't actually consequential on their own, but the data they touch is — and that's the part that determines the architecture.
~70%auto‑routed
days→hrsintake turnaround
BAAvendor‑signed
100%decisions audited
→ approach documented at digitaldimensions.us/ai‑services
case 05

Patient intake remediation.

a11y auditremediation
problem
An intake form was working for most people and unusable for screen‑reader users. An ADA complaint was already in motion.
approach
Full WCAG 2.2 AA audit with a prioritized plan; ground‑up rebuild; progressive enhancement so the form works with JS disabled; tested against NVDA, JAWS, VoiceOver.
passedindependent audit
+completion all devices
case 06

High‑deliverability transactional email.

emailinfrastructuredeliverability
problem
A services org was sending 10,000+ templated emails per month via a hosting‑provider SMTP relay and watching deliverability erode. Patients were missing notifications.
approach
Migrated to an SMTP API with proper DKIM / SPF / DMARC alignment, templated sends with per‑recipient variables, bounce handling, suppression logic, and a dashboard staff could actually read. Deliverability measured weekly, not assumed.
10k+sends/mo
−80%bounce rate
inboxplacement verified
case 07

Event recurrence engine, written honestly.

schedulingdata modeling
problem
Off‑the‑shelf calendaring libraries couldn't express the recurrence patterns a clinical training program actually needed — exclusions, shifted end dates, cohort‑specific overrides.
approach
Custom RRULE‑inspired parser with explicit overrides, materialized views for fast lookups, and a UI layer that shows the pattern as a sentence humans can read before they commit to it.
0schedule collisions reported
plainenglish preview
case 08

Subsidiary consolidation & site migration.

cmsmigrationseo
problem
A service organization had ten department websites that all looked different, contradicted each other, and cost more together than they would have cost apart.
approach
Consolidated into three focused primary sites with a unified content model, 301 redirects everywhere, reconciled structured data, and a Google Ads grant rebuilt on top of the new information architecture.
10→3sites consolidated
2×site traffic
$120KGoogle Ads grant
stack · tools I reach for

The kit, unromanticized.

I have no framework religion. I pick what will still be maintainable in five years, what has a clean upgrade path, and what the person inheriting the codebase won't hate me for.

Ffront‑end

  • HTML5 & semantic markup15y+
  • CSS3 & modern layout15y+
  • JavaScript (vanilla ES2023)15y+
  • React6y
  • Accessibility testing NVDA · VoiceOver · JAWS10y+
  • Progressive enhancement∞

Bback‑end

  • PHP 8 typed, composed13y
  • MySQL / MariaDB13y
  • REST APIs10y+
  • GraphQL3y
  • Webhook plumbing & queues6y
  • Java legacy & integrationsselective

∞ai & integration

  • Claude & OpenAI APIs2y
  • RAG pipelines chunk · embed · eval2y
  • Document intelligence2y
  • Self‑hosted open models Llama · Mistral1y
  • Prompt & eval harnesses2y
  • Vendor BAA reviewongoing

🔒compliance & security

  • HIPAA‑conscious architecture11y+
  • Encryption at rest & in transit∞
  • Audit logging & access review11y+
  • CSP & security headerstight
  • Incident response planningyes
  • GDPR / CCPA‑aware data handlingyes

⚒cms & content

  • WordPress13y
  • Drupal10y
  • Joomlalegacy
  • HubSpot5y
  • Headless / hybrid patterns4y
  • Content modeling & migrationeveryday

⚡ops & perf

  • LAMP / LEMP tuning13y
  • Apache & Nginx cpanel · bare13y
  • Core Web Vitals5y
  • GA4 / Search Consoleongoing
  • Google Ads Grants $120K+ managed10y
  • Uptime monitoring & retainer care11y+

# opinions subject to evidence. if you have better evidence, I'll change my mind.

principles · how I think

Five things I keep saying until they stop surprising people.

  1. i.

    Accessibility is table stakes, not an upgrade.

    If a keyboard user, a screen reader user, or someone on a government‑issued laptop from 2015 can't use what I build, it doesn't ship. WCAG is a floor, not a finish line. I test with the tools, not the heuristics.

  2. ii.

    Compliance is architecture, not a bolt‑on.

    HIPAA‑conscious design happens in the data diagram, not in a pre‑launch security review. Same is true for GDPR, CCPA, and whatever regulatory regime the data is operating under. If a bolted‑on safeguard is load‑bearing, the load eventually wins.

  3. iii.

    The best code is the code a stranger can take over.

    Documentation, naming, handover notes, and the shape of the deployment environment are part of the deliverable. I assume I won't be the person on call a year from now — and I build accordingly.

  4. iv.

    Ship small. Ship often. Keep it running.

    I've been burned by big‑bang launches; so have you. Every engagement I run is incremental, checkpointed, and designed so we can call it early if the thing we're building turns out to not be the thing you needed.

  5. v.

    Explainability over cleverness.

    I'd rather deliver a plain PHP application I can explain in ten minutes than a framework‑of‑the‑year stack that depends on three people understanding it. Clever is a tax on the future.

timeline · a personal changelog

How I got here.

  1. 2026

    AI integrations come online.

    LLM‑assisted triage, RAG‑grounded internal search, document intelligence for intake workflows. All with BAAs. All with human‑in‑the‑loop on anything consequential. Documented, evaluated, re‑evaluated.

  2. 2024

    Scale crosses 400 organizations.

    The multi‑jurisdictional service request platform passes 400+ active orgs. WCAG 2.2 AA conformance reaffirmed in independent audit. Zero findings.

  3. 2020

    Digital Dimensions, formalized.

    After eight years of freelance work alongside the day job, the independent practice becomes the job. Long‑standing nonprofit and healthcare clients from the 2010s come with.

  4. 2014

    A decade in Colorado healthcare.

    Webmaster at two Colorado‑based service providers. Consolidate ten department sites into three focused primaries. Double site traffic over tenure. Launch the first HIPAA‑compliant intake application on either network.

  5. 2013

    PHP & MySQL certificate.

    KSU Continuing & Professional Education. The LAMP stack becomes home for most of what I ship from here on out.

  6. 2010

    First webmaster title — Atlanta.

    A food safety company. Company site, custom intranet apps, LAMP, SEO, early Google Ads. Also: learning how much of the job is communication, not code.

  7. 2007

    BS Economics, KSU.

    Emphasis on IT applications. Dean's List. HOPE Scholarship. Econ trained me to think about systems and incentives — turns out to be excellent preparation for web work.

  8. late ’90s

    HTML as a teenager.

    Lycos and Yahoo dominated search. view‑source: was how you learned anything. I learned a lot.

now · current focus

What I'm actually working on, right now.

A /now page in the original spirit: less marketing, more "what would you tell a friend you haven't caught up with in six months."

shipping

  • LLM‑assisted intake for two healthcare clients — HIPAA‑conscious, RAG over their own policies, human‑in‑the‑loop on anything consequential.
  • WCAG 2.2 AA audit & remediation for a large services nonprofit.
  • Ongoing care for the service request platform — 400+ orgs, across state lines, steady drumbeat of small improvements.

reading

  • NIST AI Risk Management Framework and its companion profiles.
  • ADA Title III technical requirements, the latest iteration.
  • Whatever new BAA terms the frontier AI vendors quietly shipped this quarter.

learning

  • Evaluation harnesses for RAG pipelines that measure groundedness, not just output quality.
  • Self‑hosted open‑model inference — cost economics at realistic volume.
  • When a better form beats an LLM. (Often.)

listening for

  • Engagements where the honest answer is "you don't need AI here — you need a cleaner data model."
  • Accessibility remediations on intake flows that are one ADA complaint away from a very bad week.
  • Healthcare and mission‑driven teams who've been told "we'll fix that later" for two years.
updated: May 2026 · refreshed quarterly
contact · two doors

Pick the door that matches the question.

Personal, informal, "hey I have a question" → left door. Commercial engagement, contract work, scoped proposal → right door. Either way, I read every message.

personal · direct

Questions, hellos, friendly notes.

If you're a fellow developer, a student, an old colleague, or someone with a curious question about something on this site — write to me directly. This inbox is quieter and I'm happier when it stays that way.

reply time: usually within a few days
commercial · engagements

Projects, retainers, scoped work.

Hiring me for a build, an audit, a remediation, an AI integration, or ongoing engineering care? The intake lives at the practice — you'll get a proper scoping call and a fixed proposal rather than ad‑hoc email.

reply time: within one business day