Assessment Accessibility Specialist

At Curriculum Associates, we believe in the potential of every child and are changing the face of education technology with award-winning learning programs like i-Ready that serve a third of the nation’s K–8 students. For more than 50 years, our commitment to making classrooms better places, serving educators, and supporting accessible learning experiences for all students has driven the continuous improvement of our innovative programs. Our team of more than 2,500 employees is composed of lifelong learners who stand behind this mission, working tirelessly to serve the educational community with world-class programs and support every day.

Your Role:Assessment Accessibility Specialist In this role, you will work with the Assessment Editorial team improve our accessibility story for students who are blind or have low vision and for students who are deaf or hard of hearing. You will be responsible for training and overseeing the weekly vendor and independent contractor work to ensure all quality assurance steps are adhered to. You’ll work with a dynamic, hard-working team of directors and project managers focused on improving the accessibility of our high-quality educational assessments.

You’ll become an expert on our products, the processes used to create them and liaison with the other departments who work with the Assessment Editorial group to publish CA’s assessments.
As the Assessment Accessibility Specialist, you will have an impact of improving alignment to the latest WCAG guidelines, reducing WCAG exceptions on state RFPs, decreasing inefficiencies, and ensuring less rework across the organization.
You’ll work with both the Assessment Editorial and Assessment Design teams and their partners to ensure our assessment products are fully accessible to students who are blind or have low vision and to students who are deaf or hard of hearing.
You will use your experience to increase efficiency without sacrificing quality.
You will ensure that quality control standards are met.

What You’ll DoTrain, guide vendors and freelancers, and act as the accessibility SME during the completion of projects including but not limited to supervising and spot checking:

Addition / review of alt text and long description.
Addition / review of aria labels.
Addition of VTT files for closed captioning and audio descriptions for videos.
Addition and review of AI or human-voiced audio for Math /ELA items.
Editing of print products for reading order, page titles, and alt text for images.
Ensuring all existing content meets current WCAG guidelines for students who are blind or have low vision and students who are deaf or hard of hearing.
Edit Math and ELA item content for special accommodations such as designated or universal audio support (text-to-speech).
Assist the Operations Project Manager with handoffs between the Product, Assessment, and Development teams.
Become the expert and go-to person for training on accessibility and accommodations.
Build and maintain accessibility documentation and guidelines on best practices.
Build and maintain training curriculum (such as recorded videos, PowerPoint presentations) for vendors and internal staff.
Help to plan and execute trainings for internal and external teams on accessibility features.
Conduct accessibility reviews of print and digital assessment content by working closely with Editorial leads and Operations Project Managers.

What You’ll Bring
Willingness to assist other departments to develop project plans and metrics.
Must be able to take the initiative and work in a self-directed way.
Excellent communication skills.

Key Skills & Expertise
Comfort working with content management systems, JSON, audio files, VTT files, pdf editing, database systems.
Proficiency in Microsoft Office products (Excel).
An eye for details.

Experience & Education
Experience contributing to medium to large scale accessibility and accommodations projects for educational content.
Experience building/managing accessibility and accommodation features such as alt text, aria labels, correct color contrast, page navigation, print pdf reading order, NIMAS files, closed captioning, audio descriptions, and text to speech.
Experience with management of vendor throughout the life cycle of a project from planning and training to handoff.
Experience with authoring tools i.e., Learnosity.