Digital Data and Technology - Accessibility Consultant

Job summary

The first duty of the government is to keep citizens safe and the country secure. The Home Office has been at the front line of this effort since 1782. As such, we play a fundamental role in maintaining the security and economic prosperity of the UK. The Home Office leads on immigration and passports, refugee protection, counter terrorism, policing, fire services, and crime and drugs policy.

Digital Data and Technology (DDaT) enables the Home Office to keep the UK safe and secure. We design and build the services that help people apply for visas or passports; support policing and counter-terrorism operations; and protect the UK’s borders. This is an exciting time to be at the Home Office. You’ll have a chance to shape the future and support our mission to deliver exceptional public services that work for everyone.

Our work is guided by these principles:
• we put user needs first
• we value delivery and outcomes over process
• we work in the open

Our flexible working policy ensures a healthy work-life balance. We also nurture talent and offer a broad range of learning and development opportunities that will help you flourish in your role. We work hard to maintain a positive working culture and are committed to helping you fulfil your potential. We value diversity and provide an open, inclusive and supportive environment to help you do your best work.

You can keep up-to-date with our work on the Home Office DDaT blog.
Job description

This important role requires an experienced individual to help Home Office systems be holistically accessible to people with access needs, as well as meeting the:

· Home Office Accessibility Standard
· Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1+ AA
· Government Service Standard
· Equality Act 2010
· Public Sector Bodies (Website and Mobile Application) Accessibility Regulations

The team also collaboratively develops and embeds the standard into processes and professions, then assesses the efficacy of controls to meet it. This includes assurance of checks performed by testers, plus advising development teams and content producers.

You will play a vital part in our central Accessibility Assurance team, in the Chief Technology Office of the Digital Data and Technology (DDaT) directorate. You are very comfortable engaging with a range of people to effectively transfer your expertise - through conversations, presentations, training or written guidance. You are confident with getting hands on with systems to find, demonstrate and explain accessibility issues, at all stages of the software lifecycle.

Main responsibilities

Your main day to day responsibilities will be:
• contributing to and supporting the adoption of accessibility standards for services, suppliers, DDaT professions and other roles
• delivering training, consultancy and guidance about providing services/content/resources to meet access needs. This includes research, design, procurement, implementation/build and test stages.
• conducting in-house assurance of accessibility to reduce risks, by performing and reporting on reviews of delivery teams’ actions, practices and plans, as well as testing against WCAG.
• working with delivery teams on prioritising accessibility issues discovered during planning or testing or user research, providing pragmatic recommendations and on fixes and publishing an effective statement.
• supporting the compilation of data about products, their conformance with governance processes and compliance with accessibility regulations.

Other day to day activities

You will also be expected to carry out the following day to day activities:
• participating in ways to improve the team’s effectiveness and efficiency
• contributing to, supporting and sharing the work of the accessibility community across government
• keeping up to date and sharing accessibility and usability trends and techniques

This post is eligible for a DDaT RRA. Successful candidates with exceptional skills & experience may apply for a Recruitment & Retention Allowance, for an SEO role this is between £2,124 and £5,000. This allowance is subject to an initial review within six months of taking up the post and thereafter an annual review in line with departmental priorities and could be reduced or withdrawn at any time.