Web Accessibility Lead

Who We Are
ITHAKA’s mission is to expand access to knowledge and education around the world. Our services—JSTOR, Artstor, Portico, and Ithaka S+R—enable people everywhere to learn, to grow, and to overcome historical barriers to education. In carrying out our mission, we feel a deep responsibility to each other and our well-being, and are committed to building and sustaining a diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplace.
Our software platform provides access to more than 12 million academic journal articles, books, images, and primary sources to users at over 11,000 colleges, universities, libraries, and museums in 170 countries. Our media management solution enables the cataloging, preservation, and sharing of more than 13 million digital assets (and counting). As a member of our product design team, you’ll have the opportunity to work and collaborate with a dynamic group who thinks nothing is better than knowing we are having a positive impact on the world. We influence the lives of millions of people every day in groundbreaking and meaningful ways both big and small.

The Role
ITHAKA is seeking a curious, self-driven individual with a passion for quality and driving results to join our Product Design team, leading organizational efforts in the area of web accessibility and compliance across multiple products. As a Web Accessibility Lead, you’ll have the influential role across the entire organization championing web accessibility and helping create products used to the greatest extent possible by all people as we work to advance learning and knowledge around the world. You will drive, socialize, administer, and continuously support our accessibility strategy and implementation across multiple development teams aspiring to deliver inclusive products for our users.
Reporting to the Product Design Director, you will work directly with product managers, designers, and engineers on several agile development teams to ensure the solutions we provide meet the needs of all people who wish to use ITHAKA’s products. You will also partner with our Participant Experience and Support Services teams to ensure effective communication with our constituents. You’ll have oversight over the organization’s accessibility strategy to ensure the diverse needs and abilities of our users are understood, supported, and validated across our various products.

Responsibilities
Advocacy + Training
• Drive, socialize, and continuously improve product accessibility strategy and implementation across multiple product development teams.
• Provide training to staff to ensure they understand the importance of accessibility and ways to incorporate best practices into product delivery.
• Partner with members of our Participant Experience team to ensure proper accessibility representation and communication to customers and partners.
• Be the resident expert of evolving industry guidelines and digital standards and how they impact our product delivery operations. Make certain Product Owners, Engineers, and User Experience team members are continuously aware of requirement updates while also ensuring team members in various roles can effectively apply those standards as a part of product development. Manage and execute the organization’s annual audit process for multiple web products.
Audit usability + Track metrics
• Create and maintain product Voluntary Program Accessibility Templates (VPATs) for multiple web products.
• Utilize clearly defined standards, methods, and procedures for inspecting, testing, and evaluating the usability of products with assistive technologies and collaborate with engineers to identify, reproduce, prioritize, and document defects.
• Measure quality and consistency standards through metrics to drive continuous improvement.
• Evaluate, select, and implement in collaboration with multiple product teams, accessibility validation tools to further enable speed of feature delivery.
Planning + Strategy
• Create annual roadmaps to be shared with ITHAKA’s partners and constituents to address identified accessibility deficiencies, while also performing the needed monitoring of ticket completion across development teams.
• Collaborate with ITHAKA’s legal team to ensure contractual agreements are met.
• Continuously craft and roll out scalable processes and workflows to support compliance with established standards in an agile development environment.

Experience and Skills
• Bachelor’s degree in a compliance related program, computer science, human factors or 3+ years of relevant experience with demonstrable expertise in accessibility (WCAG/508) analysis and strategy definition/adoption.
• Deep knowledge of WCAG 2.1, Section 508, and VPATs.
• Knowledge and use of assistive technologies and testing tools. Examples include: JAWS, VoiceOver, and NVDA.
• Demonstrated familiarity with WAI-ARIA and HTML/CSS semantics and tagging.
• Expert level understanding of principles of accessibility and how to build and test web products that are accessible to users with disabilities in alignment with universal design principles.
• Proven ability to identify and put into action creative approaches to accessibility challenges and problems.
• Able to effectively work with agile design and front-end teams building web and mobile experiences products.
• Excellent and effective communication skills; ability to interact with and influence stakeholders from all levels of an organization.

Work for ITHAKA
We take inclusion seriously. Belonging is one of core values (see our values at https://www.ithaka.org/working-here/), and it shows in our vibrant culture. People from a wide-range of backgrounds work at ITHAKA, and we believe that unique perspectives help us realize new insights and build better solutions.
We want to work with people who are passionate about our values and who wish to contribute their perspectives and talents to ITHAKA’s mission. We enthusiastically welcome applications from people of all underrepresented backgrounds and credentials. We want to hear your story and include your perspective in the transformative work we do every day.
Learn more about Working at ITHAKA at https://www.ithaka.org/careers/

Apply Now
Candidates may apply by submitting an application online through our career site. ITHAKA is committed to providing reasonable accommodations , if there’s anything we can do to accommodate any portion of the application or hiring process, please contact us at accommodations@ithaka.org.
We are proud to be an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer. All qualified applicants receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, sex, national origin, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, religion, domestic violence victim status, veteran status, disability, history of disability or perceived disability, or other status protected by law.