More Companies Are Looking to Hire Accessibility Specialists

By Ann-Marie Alcantara | The Wall Street Journal | September 1, 2021

Accessibility jobs, ranging from “head of accessibility” to “accessibility analyst,” are increasing at a rapid pace across industries as companies strive to make their products and services more tailored to people with disabilities.

The number of job listings with “accessibility” in the title grew 78% in the year ended in July from the previous 12 months, LinkedIn said in response to a data request from The Wall Street Journal. Such listings had risen 38% in the year between August 2019 and July 2020 compared with the previous year, according to the professional networking site owned by Microsoft Corp.

Accessibility positions still represent only a fraction of the millions of jobs listed on LinkedIn. In the year between August 2020 and July 2021, about 12,000 jobs had “accessibility” in the title, LinkedIn said.

Atlassian Corp. , a maker of collaboration, development, and issue-tracking software for business use, is looking to hire a head of accessibility to lead its five engineering, research and design employees already working on accessibility. Atlassian has rolled out several accessibility updates to its products, such as adding a colorblind mode to Trello, its collaboration tool.

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By MIT Sloan CDO
MIT Sloan CDO