Web Quality Assurance Specialist (Accessibility Focused)

This newly created position is responsible for ensuring that mobile and web-based applications meet established standards of quality, including accessibility, usability, user experience, design/branding, and performance. The Specialist will serve as a resource, champion, and evangelist to other university employees and departments in support of web accessibility and usability. The Specialist will liaise with other Office of Information Technology (OIT) colleagues on the completion of related technical tasks, perform project oversight, and complete the validation at the end of the project. Example projects could include but are not limited to: ensuring mobile capability; ensuring applications or documents meet accessibility and formatting (university, federal, or 3rd party) standards; and training and consulting with university departments on related quality assurance, responsive design, and user experience standards and methods.

The responsibilities of the position can be summarized in 3 main areas:

-- Accessibility: The Specialist will perform accessibility audits and provide insight for remediation to make the web and mobile systems in compliance with various laws and requirements. The incumbent will also create accessibility documentation and teach methods/techniques to university community members on addressing accessibility barriers.
-- Design and Usability: This position will ensure that user experience standards and best practices are being followed across all web and mobile properties; collaborate with the university community to ensure branding standards are met; and leverage web analytics to support product discovery.
-- Functional Testing: The incumbent will support holistic testing efforts for multiple projects and software releases; develop, execute and maintain test plans; and document and evaluate test results

The incumbent must be knowledgeable in the technical areas of web accessibility and quality assurance but will need to be able to communicate this knowledge to both non-technical and technical colleagues alike. This position does not have supervisory responsibility.

The university is committed to ensuring equal access to information, programs, and activities through its websites for its students, faculty, staff, and participants in AU’s programs. To that end, all university content published on its website or subdomains, including content externally hosted on behalf of the university, will strive to maintain accessibility standards as defined by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0, Conformance Level AA or website content and functionality be made available to users in an equally effective accessible alternative manner.