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Re: is digital accessibility the right path for me?

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From: Mark Magennis
Date: Dec 4, 2023 8:12AM

Well done for being so honest Victoria. I kidded myself for years that I could manage people and projects but it turned out I was rubbish and it only brought me stress so it's good that you're wondering at this early stage whether you've chosen the right activity.

If you really found the trusted tester course overwhelming then I can see why you might be wondering whether there's a place in accessibility for you, but thinking you'd like to be in this line or work in the first place says a lot right off. The motivation to help people and to make society more inclusive is a basic driver that all accessibility practitioners need. And even if you find some of the coding side a bit daunting, there are a lot of different skills and abilities that make up accessibility and rarely are they all found in a single person, so people with different parts of the overall skillset can still be very valuable members of a team. I think the abilities fall into three broad buckets and you may have some of them if not all:


1.
Understanding users with disabilities and users of assistive technologies (AT) and being able to see things from their perspective. It's possible to do a lot of WCAG and Trusted Tester analysis without this ability by just looking for technical failures, but I think that often leaves us a long way short of accessibility and potentially turns it into a box-ticking exercise that leaves many real world problems unsolved. If you can be the person who really wants to understand people with disabilities and how to truly make products that work for them, then you can be very valuable, even without a large amount of knowledge of how to code a solution. Maybe others can provide that part. A lot of the biggest accessibility barriers are actually not coding issues at all but general usability or UX barriers that disproportionally affect users with disabilities or users of AT. So understanding the problems people have with software and technology in general and how those can be increased by disability and the need to use AT is a massive help. You can develop this insight either from having a disability yourself (although that doesn't necessarily mean you understand other disabilities) or by spending time with people with disabilities and users of AT, especially running and observing training or user testing where people with disabilities are trying to use websites and software. One great way to develop this is to volunteer with disability service organisations as an assistant in their learning centre.
2. Understanding web/software development. This sounds like what you lack at the moment but there are plenty of accessibility practitioners whose abilities in this regard are quite limited. You can identify accessibility issues without knowing anything about programming, but as you've recognised, you won't be able to say a lot about what it is in the coding that causes the problem, nor how to fix it. Some of that understanding is quite easy to acquire though, for example being able to use the inspector in a browser to find out whether a button has a name and how it has been given that name. But whilst it's not rocket science, it is a wide area so sniffing out the coding cause of a wide range of accessibility issues and saying what would need to be changed to fix them requires quite a lot of experience. An understanding of coding, and I'd even say an interest in coding, is quite important to develop if you want to be good at this part.
3. Being able to test systematically, comprehensively, and meticulously. All accessibility testers miss some bugs. A lot of accessibility testers miss a lot of bugs because they're just not thorough enough. Often this is simply due to a lack of time but having a very focussed and controlled mental approach can help enormously and a good QA tester can speed up and improve the accessibility process considerably so that's a valuable skill to have, even if you can only report that a problem exists for this kind of user with this type of AT doing this task. Someone else may be able to take it on from there and investigate why it happens and how to fix it.

So although you'd have to combine all of these skills to be a good solo accessibility practitioner, accessibility teams often have a mix of people with these different skills, so you may still have a place.

Mark
From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > on behalf of Victoria Chan < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Sent: Monday 4 December 2023 14:20
To: <EMAIL REMOVED> < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: [EXTERNAL] [WebAIM] is digital accessibility the right path for me?

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Hi there.



Could someone be honest with me and tell me if I'm trying to fit a square
peg into a round hole? I think I need a reality check and some help
contemplating life. LOL

For those of you who work in the digital accessibility field, is it
important to have a background in web design and development?

I've been trying to freelance as a digital accessibility consultant for the
last year, but I'm not sure if this is working for me. I thought my personal
experience and the courses that I took through Deque University were enough,
but after talking to some people who have worked in digital accessibility
for some time, I recognize that I don't have the knowledge and skills that
is needed in order to perform proper accessibility audits and
implementation. I have never been tech savvy to begin with. I mean I can
easily tell if a platform is accessible based on my own personal needs and
experiences with screen readers, but I could not for the life of me explain
the problem, nor could I offer a solution. If you asked me a question about
html and css, I would be totally lost. I honestly don't remember much from
the Deque University courses, other than how different screen readers work.
I also tried to take the section 508 trusted tester certification course
through DHS, but I was completely out of my element and found it way too
overwhelming, thus I was unable to complete the program. My friend's brother
who is a business coach suggested that perhaps I could go on Upwork and try
to find somebody who knows how to implement accessibility, and I have
actually looked into it, but still... If I'm being completely honest with
myself, a tech career is not for me. I just needed something to tie me over
so that I could generate some passive income while studying to pursue my
dream career as a certified sexual health and wellness coach. What are
y'all's thoughts? I will admit that my decision to freelance as a digital
accessibility consultant was rather impulsive. I went into this with the
mindset that I'd be able to make money quickly as I've had a hard time
finding steady employment.



Thanks



Victoria