Accessibility Consultant

We're recruiting an Accessibility Consultant. The team is part of User-Centred Design, but works with every part of Defra.

You might help teams working on forests in the morning and drinking water in the afternoon. Air Quality today, marine habitats tomorrow. Wetlands and cattle movement, bird flu and waste control. Future farming, smoke control, plant health, flooding, river obstacles. These are all things we have worked on recently.

Ultimately, you will ensure our services work for everyone.

You will:

• empathise with users and explain access needs and tools to others

• know and be able to explain regulations and standards

• become recognised as an expert in accessibility

• have opportunities to develop your own skills and knowledge in accessibility

• feel supported and valued in a team where psychological safety is important
Responsibilities
• work with delivery teams and business stakeholders, Quality Assurance and Test

• contribute to and support the adoption of accessibility standards and guidance across Defra

• use assistive technology to audit sites and services

• share your knowledge and influence projects and people

• help define requirements, and test against them

• deliver training on designing, building and testing services for accessibility

• support delivery teams to incorporate accessibility into acceptance criteria, typically in an agile environment

• work with delivery teams to prioritise issues discovered during testing, and identify pragmatic solutions and recommendations

Skills and Experience

• interpreting the latest version of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

• creating and executing plans for auditing and testing services against accessibility standards, with an awareness of wider equality legislation

• applying a thorough knowledge of assistive hardware/software and activities related to accessibility testing

• upskilling and training others in accessibility, to build capability beyond your specialism

• making recommendations to avoid or resolve accessibility issues

• understanding and explaining the ways people with access requirements need to use services and the things that help/hinder them