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Director Inclusive Design - Accessibility

Microsoft

Redmond, WA,US

This job is expired.

Looking for a talented Inclusive Design Director to join the Microsoft Accessibility team to focus on implementation and advancement of inclusive design practices make our products, services, and websites inclusive to everyone, including the 1+ billion with disabilities. Your work will help empower professionals across the company and strengthening the inclusive design-centered culture in the company.

Microsoft aims to build inclusive products, services and experiences that empower everyone. Customers and businesses increasingly prioritize and value inclusion in how we work, what we make, and how we make our products and services. We are recognized as industry thought leaders in Inclusive Design but in many ways our journey has just begun.

Working in close partnership with Microsoft Design team, the role will partner and galvanize a community of passionate Inclusive Design experts and leaders across Microsoft. The role is dedicated to catalyze people, communities, products and services to drive forward goals focused on design across the spectrum of disability leveraging knowledge in the discipline of accessibility. Building and gathering inclusive design best practices, technical capabilities, and efficiencies within Microsoft, leading the adoption and measuring the success.

This role will partner with engineering teams, hack projects and v-teams to isolate key projects that will benefit from support, from vision to product activation. Creating examples of inclusive design excellence in the physical and digital world. Empowering teams to leverage principles of inclusive design and accessibility by providing practical experience, human insights and theoretical knowledge. Then driving the learning back in the business, documenting to advance the discipline of inclusive design within the company and ultimately in the industry.
Responsibilities

Who you are:

You are passionate about creating inclusive user experiences that are beautifully intuitive and motivating
Have a deep expertise in disability, accessibility and designing for users who use assistive technologies, such as screen readers, switches, captioning and other technologies.
You think about the big picture, products, services, and websites, and most importantly, the user from concept to execution, and comfortable working from rough prototypes to finished product
You love working across teams on a mission and are eager to collaborate with engineers and business folks to find elegant but practical solutions to design challenges
You’re deliberate about your design approach, and you rely on feedback from the teams and users to iterate and refine. Thriving in a fast-paced, collaborative environment
You are ready to take ownership of the design of a complex enterprise within product, services, and website. You show great empathy for your audience
Everything you do should aim to improve the lives of people with disabilities and improving the accessibility of products, services and experiences.

What you do

Leveraging expertise in disability experience, inclusive design and accessibility, work with Product and Design teams to identify & systematize required accessibility design components/patterns and other data sources with possibility of accelerating alignment and widespread inclusive design adoption across Microsoft.
Growing expertise in inclusive design through practice. Partner with select number of teams to share expertise on inclusive design as project moves from vision to prototype to launch.
Create interactive mockups and lightweight prototypes to communicate and validate design decisions. Participate in the design, observation, and analysis of user research
Use experience to define and lead inclusive design roadmaps, program success criteria, measurement and report progress across the team and business.
Work closely with engineers to ensure the design in implemented effectively and iterate to refine the design and respond to user feedback
Provide coaching and mentorship and evangelize accessible practices to other designers to help improve the whole team
Expand documented best practice on inclusive design and accelerate knowledge in the company and industry.

Qualifications

Basic Qualifications:

8+ years’ experience designing and shipping software
3+ years’ experience designing for multiple device screens
4+ years’ experience visual interaction or product design

5+ years experience in accessibility and inclusive design applications.


Preferred Qualifications:

A current online portfolio. Please provide a link in your application.
A degree in Interaction Design, HCI or equivalent experience designing and shipping accessible software.
Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request via the Accommodation request form.

Benefits/perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.

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