Sage is committed to creating accessible experiences for all users of our products. An Accessibility Specialist plays a central role in helping product teams identify, understand, and resolve accessibility issues. They spend the majority of their time auditing digital products, but also collaborate with designers and developers to help them fix issues.
This is a hybrid role – three days per week in our Newcastle office.
Key Responsibilities:
An Accessibility Specialist is an established practitioner who:
- Has professional experience contributing to shipped projects
- Works proactively and self-sufficiently, while collaborating effectively with others
- Can clearly communicate the rationale behind their recommendations to technical and non-technical audiences
- Is comfortable being a visible and active member of the team, regularly sharing progress, insights, and knowledge with colleagues across the company
The role of Accessibility Specialist requires that they:
- Are committed to understanding and meeting the needs of customers with diverse access requirements, including those related to vision, hearing, mobility, and cognition
- Carry out accessibility audits of websites, applications, and components, adhering to a structured audit framework
- Document audit findings clearly, using consistent structure and language, and communicate findings to relevant stakeholders
- Collaborate with product teams to help prioritise, explain issues, answer questions, and advise on practical solutions during remediation
- Provide guidance to designers and developers during the product lifecycle to help prevent accessibility issues before they arise
- Attend design reviews and huddles to offer accessibility feedback early in the process
- Work one-on-one or in small groups with designers and developers to advise on specific design patterns or code implementations
- Collaborate with other members of the accessibility team, providing support where appropriate
- Establish and maintain strong relationships with product teams and other key stakeholders
- Demonstrate continuous improvement in accessibility knowledge, staying up to date with evolving standards, tools, and best practices
- Actively participate in Sage's accessibility community
Skills, Knowledge, and Experience
An Accessibility Specialist has most of the following attributes:
- A high level of attention to detail in all aspects of their work
- Strong knowledge of the technologies that make up a digital web-based product, like HTML and ARIA, CSS, and JavaScript
- Experience with 'native' application accessibility, for example iOS and Android
- Familiarity with common design patterns and UI components, and the ability to identify accessibility risks in design or development stages
- Experience designing or advising on accessible, user-centered interfaces and experiences
- A track record in performing accessibility audits using both automated tools (for example axe DevTools) and manual testing techniques
- Solid understanding of how assistive technologies work, and how people with disabilities interact with digital products
- Experience using screen readers, keyboard-only navigation, and other assistive technologies
- Familiarity with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), specifically version 2.1 to level AA (knowledge of WCAG 2.2 is a plus)
- Comfortable providing constructive, empowering feedback in one-to-one conversations or group settings
- Able to work across multiple projects simultaneously, managing workload and priorities
- Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to write clear, actionable audit reports
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