Junior Accessibility Consultant

Salary: £22,000 basic

At Nomensa, we believe that making websites accessible for all is a basic human right, not just a legal requirement. Founded in 2001, we design world class digital experiences for an impressive roster of instantly recognisable clients. We have a team of around 100 industry professionals, across our Bristol, London and Amsterdam offices. As members of W3C we help shape the global best practice accessibility guidelines and directly contribute to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

So, excitingly, due to increased demand for our services, and our commitment to consistently nurturing junior talent, Nomensa is looking for a Junior Accessibility Consultant to join us in either our Bristol or London office. You’ll be working from home initially, but we anticipate a hybrid home/office working pattern in future, when the pandemic eases.

What you’ll be doing
Accessibility practitioners at Nomensa work to a world class standard of web accessibility. As a Junior Accessibility Consultant here, no two days will be the same, but you'll be learning from skilled practitioners and leaders in the field, including Alastair Campbell who is co-editor of WCAG, and Al Duggin, former Head of Accessibility at the Government Digital Service.

Your work will include conducting full, meticulous audits of our clients’ websites and applications. You’ll be conducting audits against the latest accessibility standards and advising on best practice, across web, mobile and documents. You will also perform accessibility feedback on designs – providing solutions for accessibility issues, and writing and creating reports for clients.

The work we do supports many different types of user. This means you could be performing assistive technology testing to support users with vision, hearing or mobility impairments, as an example.

At Nomensa our mantra is to humanise technology, and we want to craft the best user experience in everything we do. The work you will be doing will be rewarding, as it genuinely makes a difference to people – in some cases, helping them to access essential services that they might struggle to use without our work.

What we need from you
We’re looking for someone who is passionate about accessibility and making a difference. You’ll be doing auditing and writing reports to advise clients on how to make their websites and digital services more accessible to users and this will definitely improve their services and businesses but also make the web a better place!

A passion for front-end development or experience of coding would be very useful and beneficial in this role because you will often be looking at code to understand how sites have been built, and how this may have impacted on the accessibility, and the knock-on effect. At times, this role could be described as the web equivalent of a forensic scientist!

Being comfortable and keen to become more involved directly with clients, and having good communication skills would be beneficial to helping you progress your career and hone new skills. Our accessibility practitioners advise, guide and sometimes train our clients and evangelise behavioural change within their organisations and software engineering teams, to develop an ‘accessibility first’ mindset.

We know that a successful Junior Accessibility Consultant could come from many different routes, for example a computer science or software engineering degree, or you may also have gone through a development bootcamp.

Equally, you may not have a degree but be deeply passionate about accessibility, and web technologies. At Nomensa, your attitude is as important as your technical background, so we would love to hear in your covering email why you are attracted to this opportunity.

There are lots of skills and behaviours that make for a fantastic Nomensa practitioner. One of these is how well you collaborate with other people, a relentless pursuit of excellence, and passion for what you do, which in this case, could be making a difference to the lives of millions of people. For example, we’ve recently been making government digital services more accessible for various users, in the full range of human capability, depending on their needs, to include vision, hearing, mobility, and thinking.

In this role, an analytical mindset with outstanding attention to detail will ensure we’re not missing any detail when it comes to advising our clients on best practice web accessibility. Small details in code can have a big impact, and it’s our job to identify these issues.

We're hoping you can demonstrate familiarity with some of the accessibility and usability best practices. We can teach a lot of this, but an understanding of WCAG 2.1 AA, automated testing tools and assistive technologies including screen readers, speech recognition and magnification software would be beneficial to your application.

From a development perspective, an understanding of HTML, CSS and WAI-ARIA would be nice-to-have, as is JavaScript, although this is not essential.

Why you’ll love us
Our people love working here, it’s a supportive working environment where you can expect to work with, and learn from, teams of highly collaborative, skilled practitioners, and we are one of the few companies within the UK to achieve gold standard accreditation by Investors in People.

We are very much committed to giving everyone a strong and supportive platform for ongoing career development, and you’ll have excellent variety of projects to work on for well known clients in the commercial, charity, and government sectors.

We work hard to make our working culture one of the best in the industry. As an example, our team of Chief Happiness Officers arrange surprise events and fundraising days throughout the year. It’s an exciting, collaborative environment where we have one focus: humanising technology and designing things in the ‘right’ way.

The people you will be working with are very passionate, and have a relentless pursuit of excellence, and take pride in their work, so if this sounds like it could be a team that suits your own ethos, then we would love to hear from you.

Pay and benefits
In addition to a starting salary of £22,000, you will receive a holiday allowance of 25 days a year, rising with service over 5 years to a total of 30 days holiday, plus an extra day off on your birthday and a host of other benefits we are continually refining to make sure this is a great place to work! There's an extra day off for your birthday too, because you are special and deserve it!

How to apply
Please upload your details on our recruitment portal. We would ask that you include a covering email to explain your reasons for applying and your interest in joining Nomensa, as this will help us to assess the different applications and understand your hidden talents or experiences that might not be on a CV.

Closing date for applications

The closing date for applications is Friday 19th February.

Nomensa is an equal opportunities employer and positively encourages applications from suitably qualified and eligible candidates regardless of sex, race, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender reassignment, religion or belief, marital status, or pregnancy and maternity.

Please note, we are not working with recruitment agencies. Thank you.