An Incomplete List of Things I Do at Work

I am an accessibility professional. I’ve been working in the field for 10 years. The last 20 have all been for the same company in the same field (healthcare tech). Here is a list, albeit incomplete, of the work I am expected to do or domains to understand:

• Give feedback on UI mockups
  
• Design accessible interfaces
  
• Understand and provide feedback on code-level designs
  
• Communicate to upper management about industry trends
  
• Monitor changes in regulations and laws in 8 countries
  
• Develop processes for any/all parts of the software lifecycle
  
• Train employees on accessibility in their jobs
  
• Train our customers on accessibility features in our software
  
• Train our customers’ trainers on how to train their users with assistive technology using our software
  
• Write documentation on features
  
• Manage customer interest groups on accessibility
  
• Test with assistive tech on all major platforms with numerous browsers

Unicorn Territory

Doing all of these things well? That’s unicorn territory.

You want me to review code AND train end users? Doing either of these well is two completely different skill sets. Doing both well takes a lot of time and effort to get there.

It’s… a lot. And people wonder why it’s hard to do the job well or why we that have a hard time getting everything done.

And Yet…

This list of expectations seems to be pretty typical at most places. Cases where accessibility folks work in a single role, say as software developers or designers, are definitely the outlier. Having a single person that has to learn all these domains and work effectively is kind of absurd.

Published on April 6, 2025