Radical Candor about Accessibility Day-to-day Job Responsibilities

Some days you get to tilt windmills, some days the windmills tilt you

Cartoon windmill in black with a Don Quixote like character on a horse with a spear charging towards it

So far in the category of “accessibility as a career”, I’ve written articles about:

1. Self-study tips for qualifying to work in accessibility
2. Questions managers should be asking if they are interviewing accessibility testers (and don’t know a lot about accessibility themselves), and
3. Questions you should be asking if you are interviewing for an accessibility job.

So I’m turning the trio into a quartet by discussing what exactly an accessibility manager does day-to-day — in fairly blunt terms.

You spend a lot of time attending meetings trying to convince people to do things that aren’t even close to the top of their priority list

Accessibility is rarely at the top of most product manager’s MVP list. BF Skinner proved that behavior that is rewarded gets repeated. The opposite is also true — what is not rewarded usually drops to the bottom of most individuals’ “what I think is important” list. Accessibility is a behavior that is not frequently rewarded on the product side of the house. This part of the accessibility management…