As an accessibility specialist within the Department for Education you’ll work with multidisciplinary teams, alongside researchers, designers, and developers to ensure we deliver user-centred services that are accessible and inclusive.
You will
- work within the Design Operations team to embed accessibility best practice into product and service teams
- increase the capability of teams to deliver accessible products and services through training, support, and advice
- write and maintain guidance and advise on latest WCAG criteria and accessibility standards
- monitor products for accessibility best practices and conformance to accessibility standards
- review products and services using a range of techniques, including design reviews, automated testing and manual code inspection and provide recommendations for resolving problems
- benchmark and track the success of interventions to embed accessibility practices, identifying and escalating risks where necessary
- support product teams with procuring, and interpreting, independent accessibility audits
Skills you need
- familiarity with front-end development technologies, specifically HTML, CSS, JavaScript and WAI-ARIA
- expert knowledge of existing and emerging accessibility guidelines and standards, particularly the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)
- demonstrable experience of evaluating the accessibility of digital websites and providing feedback, advice and solutions to help fix identified issues
- knowledge and experience of testing with a range of assistive technologies including customised browser settings, screen magnification, screen readers, speech recognition and literacy software
- proven experience of working with delivery teams to identify and fix accessibility barriers and raise accessibility capability
- demonstrable ability to write accessibility guidance and documentation, and deliver accessibility training through presentations and workshops
- experience working in agile, multi-disciplinary teams
Selection criteria
Essential skills and expertise we will assess you against are:
- Communicating information. You can work collaboratively in a group and build relationships with others. You can identify issues through Agile ‘health checks’ and work with others to address them. You can manage stakeholder expectations. You can be flexible and capable of proactive and reactive communication. You can host or moderate difficult discussions within the team or with senior stakeholders. (Skill level: practitioner)
- Consultancy. You can provide advice and recommendations to stakeholders based on your significant specialist knowledge and experience. You can lead the definition of guidance and inform how the organisation approaches delivery. (Skill level: practitioner)
- Governance and assurance (accessibility). You can challenge teams, make full use of existing arrangements and build strong relationships to reduce or remove risk associated with not meeting accessibility standards. (Skill level: practitioner)
- Technical understanding (accessibility). You can demonstrate excellent knowledge of accessibility standards and legislation, including edge cases. You can communicate requirements to a range of stakeholders. You can actively share a deep knowledge of how to select and use appropriate technology (such as ARIA, Accessible Rich Internet Applications) to provide an excellent experience. You can perform detailed audits of websites, services and documents, document findings clearly, and provide solutions for others to work from. You can understand and communicate how usability influences accessibility, and the boundary between them. You can advocate removing barriers across all your interactions. You can provide training on a range of accessibility issues. You can demonstrate confidence using a range of assistive technologies. (Skill level: expert)