Product Accessibility Career Ramp
Preface
The following are competencies that can be used to hire or as a planning guide for career advancement in an active organization. Having open conversations and investing in the careers of your team is one of the best ways to keep employees engaged.
If used as a career planning or feedback guide, set the stage that this is not a promotion checklist but a starting point for an ongoing conversation about what an individual contributor is doing and what they can do to meet their career goals.
For additional context, please read Ramping up your team for Product Accessibility Success
Entry-level
This is someone with minimal experience although you could have experience in a specific craft such as design, engineering, or program management.
Maturity and diplomacy
Even at entry level you should be able to develop positive, productive relationships in your company that encourage collaboration and discussion.
What does this look like?
When collaborating, you consider and build on teammates’ ideas and suggestions.
On projects, you react to organizational changes with understanding and can stay productive, constructive, and engaged.
You earn your teammates’ respect, you have positive interpersonal skills, and you take their working styles into account to achieve results.
You regularly consult with your team members about projects and processes. You investigate and seek to learn from your team’s previous projects.
You can deal with stressful situations.
Communication skills
Building on maturity and diplomacy, communicating effectively with internal partners and vendors is key to building software as part of a team. Communicating effectively across organizational, technical and political boundaries will be key in any career, but more so in one that is cross-functional.
You are able to understand directions and give clear feedback.
You provide your team with clear updates on work, needs, and day-to-day matters as needed.
You can clearly and concisely articulate project criteria, content, and possible problems–with limited jargon.
You can communicate effectively and respectfully both in person and virtually.
You show good judgment on when to escalate issues to leadership.
You can communicate the appropriate information to your project partners that they need–at the level of detail that they need.
Relationship-building
Building software at an organization is about people. You should value building relationships with other employees and your community.
You regularly express public and private gratitude and appreciation to those who offer help to you and your team.
You are open to exploring new things, including when failure is a possibility. You can learn from your mistakes and can share the lessons learned.
You respond proactively to a challenge.
Your words and actions are consistent. You follow through on your commitments.
Standards and technology - Level One
Although being inclusive is ultimately about usability, understanding industry accessibility standards provide a rubric to assess inclusivity by. Some familiarity with assistive technology is a must.
You have working knowledge current Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and Accessibility Conformance Reports (ACR). You understand the basic principles of an accessible user interface.
You are familiar with at least one desktop or mobile screen reader, or other assistive technology.
You can use WCAG standards to complete an assessment of a feature or product, with guidance from another team member.
You can clearly communicate issues and summarizes solutions while giving consideration to the audience's familiarity of accessibility.
Implementation - Level One
Since you are part of a software company, any technical skills will serve you well. Contributing to the design and development of accessible interactions should be expected.
You partner with your colleagues to learn about and apply accessible engineering techniques.
You can create accessible static prototypes with some direction.
You show good judgment in choosing when to escalate issues to management.
You can convert a Definition of Done (Agile) specification to an accessible interaction
Senior-level
This is someone with a few years in the industry working professionally in accessibility or adjacent to a program.
Team trust
You build strong, productive relationships and foster collaboration with project partners.
In discussions with project partners, you focus mostly on learning from others and understanding them than on responding to them. You regularly ask questions to gain insight and perspective into a project brief.
You provide timely, intelligent, and respectful responses to partners' questions, or captures responses for follow up. You know when to say “I don't know” while maintaining credibility.
Presentations and the review of your work are conducted successfully. You can guide conversations with partners professionally in a way that defends your work without getting defensive yourself. You respond well to criticism.
Consulting
As a subject matter expert (SME), you will need to provide guidance to partners in order to deliver successful projects and programs.
You have a clear point of view and can communicate it well.
You demonstrates ownership and collaboration with partners to build, revise, or develop planning tools, such as project briefs or Objectives and Key Results (OKR), for short-term or long-term projects.
You proactively manage expectations and effectively negotiates timeline and scope changes as needed.
You adjust your working style to match your project partners' needs and expectations as well as working environment especially when working virtually.
You can communicate project issues using clear terminology that everyone can understand.
You often helps partners understand your team’s process and how it maps to the greater organization’s processes.
Problem Solving
You are a problem solver. You can distill and reframe a problem. Then, you can define a framework for resolving it.
You can identify similarities in problems and draw on connections to craft effective solutions to them. You can separates crucial issues from minor one. You can break down larger problems into manageable parts.
You can quickly produce multiple solutions and can characterize the strengths and weaknesses of each solution.
You can creatively reframe questions in order to move towards solutions that meet larger business goals.
You seek out solutions to less well-defined problems, including some for which you have little prior experience.
You work proactively with other groups to effect change. You can ramp up quickly when joining projects.
You can see risks and limitations of proposed solutions. You can assess the magnitude of a risk and identify ways to deal with that risk.
Relationship-Building - Level One
You drive business and social value across the organization and build valued relationships with customers, employees, and your community.
You demonstrate empathy for partners, seeking to understand their needs and contextualize feedback from their points of view.
You build relationships that go beyond project-driven interactions, using conversation and active listening to deepen connections with partners.
You consider worst-case scenarios, including how project or product decisions could cause unintended harm and exclude some stakeholders.
You actively work on team, organization, or company cultural initiatives. You celebrate group successes and shares your team’s knowledge with the larger organization.
Implementation - Level Two
You have a solid working knowledge of web accessibility standards. You go beyond basic checklists when assessing accessibility. You work together with design, engineering, and product owners to create a broadly accessible user experience for a product.
You understand changes in web standards and stay up to date on best practices and new standards.
When solving problems, you go beyond checklists to apply broad concepts and practices. You resolve a range of issues in creative ways. You have a mature understanding of constraints and tradeoffs for an implementation decision.
You know when to rely on guidelines or standards to define a solution, and when to use a prototype to test a hypotheses.
You have a strong understanding of both design and accessibility, and can use both to create and inform innovative product experiences.
You can systematically conduct testing using both automated tools and frameworks and manual testing methodologies in order to ensure a thorough review.
You can partner with a Product Owner to develop a strategy for making an inaccessible product accessible. You demonstrate mature judgment in balancing compliance and usability.
Program Management and Strategy - Level Two
You have proven experience in program management at the product level. You can contribute to accessibility strategy at a product level.
You triage and prioritize work with senior colleagues and stakeholders. You work proactively to clarify questions and resolve any blocking issues.
You conduct outreach and education in their area of responsibility. You engage design and engineering on internal platforms such chat, ticket system, and office hours.
You can organize work requiring coordination with others and lead small projects.
You can accurately and proactively reports status of accessibility activities and products in your area.
Lead / Staff
This is someone who is a key member of the staff and is an early strategist on new initiatives–if not generating them. This person can communicate effectively with any part of the organization and understand what other departments value.
Organizational trust
You demonstrate ownership, consistent communication, and active listening needed to build trusting relationships with others.
You manage engagement and expectations across internal and external project partners and stakeholders.
You earn others’ trust by demonstrating comprehensive understanding of project briefs and expectations.
You communicate clearly throughout a project. You respond quickly and intelligently to questions. You proactively communicate timelines and scope changes. You deliver on commitments.
You can manages conflict and communication challenges using interpersonal skills that build trust.
You build rapport with internal partners to deepen trust outside of typical transactional project communications.
You work with recruiting to identify a diverse pipeline and hire world-class candidates from various backgrounds, locations, and sets of abilities. You are able to on-board them smoothly and effectively.
Leadership
Demonstrates behavior, attitudes, actions, and judgment that inspire employees to follow you and other leaders to trust you.
You show initiative by projecting confidence and direction that inspires respect from your team.
You advocate for your team members with active partnership and collaboration.
You proactively coordinate brainstorming and ideation sessions and maximize the value of the limited project time you and your partners have.
You show understanding of project sequencing and approach, including project management, reviews, and quality deliverables.
You facilitate growth opportunities for team members.
You propose improvements to existing processes that can increase alignment and efficiency.
You invest in your own development and help team members develop through coaching, mentoring, and educational opportunities. You advocates for team goals.
Relationship Building - Level Two
Embraces the philosophy, practice, and mindsets of relationship design, to drive business and social value across the organization and building valued relationships with customers, employees, and community.
You can faciliate difficult conversations about worst-case scenarios and can questions projects, processes, and assumptions that may be harmful to others, especially marginalized persons.
You go beyond expectations from management to lead team, organization, or company cultural initiatives. You share team knowledge with the larger organization. You promote and publicize group success.
Implementation - Level Three
Demonstrates leadership on all aspects of web accessibility standards and assistive technology. Expertly solves design and engineering problems. Partners with business line leadership to drive strategy at the business line level.
You can inform technical strategy by educating internal teams.
You influences design and experience requirements to accommodate accessibility at the business line level.
You collaborate with technical architects to advance accessibility for broad impact.
You understand technical implementation of most features in your area and have a deep understanding of engineering constraints driven by performance and UI framework limitations.
You drive outreach and partnerships across multiple product lines. You develop successful strategies and innovations across multiple business lines.
Program Management and Strategy - Level 3
You share appropriate institutional knowledge. You regularly document tutorials, tips, checklists, and operational processes. You provides virtual channels through which others can contribute to and consume information.
You identify gaps in operational knowledge across the organization and develop actionable, measurable plans for others' skill development.
You keep stakeholders informed of each project and are able to make decisions based on accurate, trusted data.
You seeks out workflow and process innovations while assessing which best meet the needs of stakeholders and the business as a whole.
You deliver retrospectives and leadership summaries to celebrate successes, quantify impact, and highlight best practices for future reference.
Connecting the greater business
You confidently convey the competitive value of the business, its solutions, and can differentiate them from competitors.
You understand the company’s product portfolio, including awareness of where user interaction patterns can be consolidated, and the value of various product design teams or features being "greater than the sum of their parts" when paired together.
You can represent your team and convey the value of the company to users, customers, research participants, and new hires.
You can bring in outside perspectives on thoughts, tools, and trends that would add value to how we work at the company.
You have a solid understanding of internal processes and what partner groups value. You can engage with human resources, finance, procurement, marketing, and other teams.
Architect / Executive
This person has the vision and can execute on that vision and is known in the industry as a trusted leader.
Consulting
You provide partners and stakeholders with the guidance they need to deliver successful strategic initiatives.
You have established a leadership role and can assembles multiple stakeholders, aligns them around a goal or idea, and see the resulting project through to completion. You take initiative, seeking insight from beyond your direct working group. You can easily draw on relationships across lines of business.
You can overcomes obstacles to resolve problems, both within and outside established processes. You draw on tactical and strategic negotiation skills to work though differing perspectives and priorities from stakeholders.
You regularly publicizes successful projects and enhance stakeholders' careers and reputations. You shares project learnings back to the business.
Vision
You have a clear vision of future possibilities, and can communicate that vision effectively to others.
You have a perspective on how things "should be," and can communicate that perspective effectively to others.
You can generate big ideas—novel concepts that can be owned and implemented by your department or the greater business.
You bring ideas and opportunities together in ways beyond the obvious. You can communicate innovative approaches to a range of stakeholders from different disciplines.
You build and champion your discipline and the company’s long range plans. When a new business need arises, you help your team pivot and manage change appropriately.
Relationship Building - Level Three
You can champion the practice of accessibility by driving business and social value across the organization and building quality relationships with customers, employees, and your community.
You maintain focused discussions as a conversation, not a lecture. You can employ tactical negotiation skills to work though differing perspectives.
You challenge the organization to think and act optimistically, achieve desired outcomes, and approach unknowns and ill-defined challenges with confidence rather than defeat.
You can identify, communicate, and respond to unspoken needs within the organization.
You amplify ethical decisions and can push back on work that may be harmful to customers.
Implementation - Level Four
You are internal and external leader in web standards and assistive technology. You can expertly solves design and engineering problems. You can partner with any level of business line leadership to drive strategy at the business line level.
You drive accessible experiences across multiple business lines by building consensus, fostering discussion, and defending recommendations at the highest levels.
You define long-range plans, Objectives and Key Results (OKR), and product roadmaps that span multiple releases of software.
You partner with business line leads to develop a multiple product testing strategy.
You drive strategy at the multiple business line level. You partner with stakeholders to motivate and prioritize accessibility. You can drive change despite executive resistance.
You drive customer adoption of accessible features and inclusive best practices. You actively seek and incorporate real-world customer feedback into project roadmaps.
Special Thanks
Special thanks to Joe Lanman and Gov.UK, the Salesforce DesignOps organization, and the Office of Accessibility folks at Salesforce for creating the foundation of this career ladder.