Principal Digital Accessibility Technical Lead

Full Job Description

About Ancestry: When you join Ancestry, you join a human-centered company where every person’s story is important. We believe that by discovering the struggles and triumphs of our past, we can foster deeper bonds and more meaningful connections among families and communities. Our talented team of scientists, engineers, genealogists, historians, and storytellers is dedicated to empowering customers around the world from all backgrounds on their journeys of personal discovery.
With more than 27+ billion digitized global historical records, 100 million family trees, and 18 million people in our growing AncestryDNA database, Ancestry helps customers discover their family story and gain a new level of understanding about their lives. Passionate about dedicating your work to enriching people’s lives? You belong at Ancestry.

Principal Digital Accessibility Technical Lead Ancestry is seeking an individual who is passionate about digital accessibility to join as our Principal Digital Accessibility Technical Lead . The Lead will be responsible for unifying and driving Ancestry’s digital accessibility strategy and execution. They will use deep functional and technical knowledge of accessibility advancements to partner with UX, Creative, Product, Web and Mobile Development, and Legal teams, leading a coordinated accessibility strategy for delivering accessible Ancestry customer experiences. Although this is a “hands-on” role, it is anticipated that the Lead will also build and lead a small “Accessibility Center of Excellence” team over time to accelerate strategy implementation and build scalable accessibility processes, tooling and features. The Lead will regularly assume informal/formal leadership roles within teams and must have strong technical expertise and a desire to learn, train, and collaborate.
You will… -Utilize your expertise to work with teams to coordinate and facilitate Ancestry’s approach to building products with every customer in mind.

Develop a dynamic vision and advocate with leaders at all levels for accessibility and usability organization wide. Create scalable and sustainable strategies and practices to support that vision.
Coordinate with vendors for performing regular, ongoing accessibility audits on all of Ancestry’s web and mobile applications; regularly augment vendor audits manually
Train the Product, Development, and Quality Engineers on accessibility best practices for consistently building and testing for accessible products based on industry standards, including WCAG 2.1 and further updates.
Partner with the UX/UI teams to ensure design patterns meet accessibility standards.
Standardize and own the measures used to define success for accessibility at Ancestry.
Work with accessibility vendors to ensure software defects and vulnerabilities are remediated within the agreed timeframe.
Architect an automated accessibility testing approach for baseline compliance as part of our CI/CD processes.

Who you are... -Driven and passionate about creating digital products accessible to everyone of all abilities.

10+ years experience: successfully leading and/or consulting on building accessibility into products, including testing, remediation and sustainability efforts; web software development experience with a solid understanding of semantic HTML, CSS, and JavaScript approaches to solving accessibility challenges.
Comfortable with driving accessibility efforts through collaboration with multiple teams working on varying features.
IAAP Certified Web Accessibility Specialist, bachelor's degree in computer science, and/or related programming experience strongly preferred.
Confidently able to use a screen reader in the same manner as a typical member of the blind community.
Experienced in inclusive design practices and collaborating with a UX team.
Experienced launching accessible features and products at scale.
Track record of advocacy for the disability community is preferred.
Extensive knowledge of Apple Accessibility Guidelines, Android Accessibility Guidelines, current Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1) and proposed updates, and Section 508 compliance.
Experienced with change management and/or driving cultural change.
Experienced in hiring and managing a small team.

Tools Experience Expert-level proficiency in screen reader software, including: -VoiceOver -JAWS -NVDA
Knowledge of automated accessibility testing tools, which may include: -axe DevTools, Auditor, and Monitor by deque -AATT by Paypal -Perfecto
Experience with various accessibility testing tools for developers, which may include: -WAVE by WebAim -Color Contrast and other design checkers -axe a11y browser extension or similar -Other mobile A11y Tools Additional Information: Ancestry is an Equal Opportunity Employer that makes employment decisions without regard to race, color, religious creed, national origin, ancestry, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, age, mental or physical disability, medical condition, military or veteran status, citizenship, marital status, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. In addition, Ancestry will provide reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities.
All job offers are contingent on a background check screen that complies with applicable law. For San Francisco office candidates, pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, Ancestry will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.
Ancestry is not accepting unsolicited assistance from search firms for this employment opportunity. All resumes submitted by search firms to any employee at Ancestry via-email, the Internet or in any form and/or method without a valid written search agreement in place for this position will be deemed the sole property of Ancestry. No fee will be paid in the event the candidate is hired by Ancestry as a result of the referral or through other means.