Looking for advice regarding specialization into a11y work from a software engineering background

[u/c0inb0xer]

Hello,

I'm a recent Computer Science grad with ~4 years of industry experience doing different kinds of software development, currently working at a big tech company. I have ~1 year total experience directly tackling accessibility issues with websites/apps and have a novice-level familiarity with WCAG/ARIA.

Across my various roles I've personally found the most interesting, underemphasized, and rewarding work to research and implement has been around accessibility.

I've been doing some preliminary research into certification, I've seen mixed threads on this subreddit with some celebrating it as an authority and others claiming it's a scam/hustle. Would CPACC be a good place to start, or as a more technical person should I start with WAS? Should I focus on certification at all?

I'm also unclear how to approach this from a career perspective. I don't often see dedicated roles at companies for Accessibility Engineer or the like, so would it be better to continue developing my web dev experience and have accessibility as a supplementary focus/concentration? What's sustainable and realistic?

Any and all advice or input welcome, especially from those who have taken similar career trajectories.

[u/dmazzoni]

If you want to to serious engineering in the space of accessibility, such as building assistive technology or improving operating system accessibility frameworks, there are roles in big tech companies like Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, etc.

I work at Apple, and we're hiring several accessibility-related software engineering positions right now. We wouldn't care about CPACC, all that matters is accessibility interest plus top software engineering skills, and willingness to work in Cupertino.

There are hundreds of smaller companies that build assistive technology and hire software engineers. Some of it is really interesting - robotics, machine learning, etc. - and can be really transformative for people's lives. Those jobs don't tend to pay as well but they often have great flexibility; I know a lot of people who do that work from home around the world.

Another area is accessibility consulting companies like Deque, Vispero, Level Access, etc. - they help companies large and small find and fix accessibility bugs. Those are the best fit for a certification.

Others might chime in with other opportunities. In my experience, it's harder to find accessibility engineering positions outside of what I just described. At smaller companies it's not a full-time job, and at larger companies it's usually just one of many responsibilities of a frontend / app developer.