I took a year off: It's been pretty good (Part 2)

I used this career break to gain a new perspective, make room for opportunities and grow as a human who solves problems for a living.

Here's what I learned about myself, the accessibility field and the job market we're now facing.

Finding better problems to solve, some found me

For the first 6 months, I played outdoors, did DIY projects around the house, and spent way too much on my truck.

After that, it was time to dig in to something new. I built out Design, Android and iOS acceptance criteria for AtomicA11y.com, and refined the Web criteria in ways I wasn't able to before.

Becoming the… accessibility coach… coach

I added a coaching guide to TheBookOnAccessibility.com, and began to look at the reasons and solutions to why accessibility programs just aren't working. I also began to analyze the way we sell accessibility, and found a new way to drive investment in accessibility and inclusion.

Making it to the stage

Around the same time, I was invited to lead a workshop and deliver a keynote at UX-Lx, delivered talks on leadership buy-in, and participated in podcasts, webinars and online learning events. Those events have created a reasonable amount of momentum as I've built followers on LinkedIn.

Trying the consulting gig

I always kinda stayed away from "consulting" as a job title because that typically means "unemployed" — but I gotta say, it's entirely refreshing to walk into a room of people who are actually interested and primed to hear what you have to say as an outsider.

Fine. I'll make an accessibility training

I've admired everyone who has created an accessibility course (looking at you Soren Hamby Derek Featherstone Anna Cook, M.S. ) and didn't think that was something I needed to do. However, even with AtomicA11y.com as a resource that allows me to scale my knowledge and time, I still find myself laying down foundational UX concepts to design and dev teams every time we meet, so I've begun transforming AtomicA11y.com into a training, following the same educational philosophy.

1. We learn what we must

People learn when they're motivated. For people to be motivated to learn at work, they must have a need for the knowledge.

This need comes from 2 possible sources:

• They are self motivated/engaged enough to improve their work (in which case they are probably seeking the same knowledge anyway)

• They are responding to a measurable requirement that is systematically unavoidable.

2. Education can't suck:

• If that training interferes with their flow state, it will be seen as a friction.

• If that training complements their flow state, it will be seen as indispensable

So, to that end, I'm creating a series of short (10-15 minutes) videos that are enough to get people started with any component, imprinting the existence of useful information and making it easy to reference later in practice.

If you actually spend time with teams designing and writing code, you're gonna love these. If you call yourself a WCAG guru, you're gonna be disappointed. I just don't think a designer asks, "How can I make this checkbox perceivable, operable, understandable and robust?" every time they lay down a new UI. They just need the criteria and why it's a requirement.

What I've created so far:

• Checkbox

• Dialog modal popover

• Details expander

• HTML & landmarks

• Text input fields

• Radio buttons

• Select dropdown

The videos will be free for everyone, and once complete (about 20 videos) I'll be making a paid version available in SCORM format for enterprise learning management systems.

(Why free? Because I think the big accessibility players in this space charge numbers with too many figures (6 to be exact) for crappy training nobody benefits from, and I like asymmetric strategies that upset markets).

It is a tough market, but be yourself

Whereas 5 years ago, someone with accessibility and communication expertise could write their own salary and job description, now there are ~300+ applicants to every job that even mentions accessibility.

What happened?

Here's what I'm seeing right now in the accessibility SME job market: Everyone is suddenly an accessibility expert.

Every mediocre UX/UI designer who attended a half-day accessibility training is competing for your accessibility expert job, and I'm pretty sure they're getting them. They're probably a lot more eager and willing to work for less.

Experience can be a detriment

Contracting agencies won't advance senior people for roles because every penny they don't pay you, they get to keep. So it's in their best interests to forward resumes from junior people who are willing to work at a lower rate.

I happily missed some "opportunities"

I've applied for top tier jobs when they've appeared, and because of my posts on LinkedIn, TheBookOnAccessibility.com and AtomicA11y.com I do get interviews, but not the right fit so far.

At this career stage, an interview isn't about showing off what you know, it's a conversation about explaining how you'd use your experiences to solve their problems. Remember: The hiring manager is the one with the problem, not you.

One thing I learned is that hiring managers aren't always looking for someone to tell them the truth.

Always tell the truth. It's the easiest thing to remember — David Mamet

I lost out on a role I was really excited about because they were quietly obsessed with building an accessibility UX research program. I explained that they weren't ready to do research — because their products were still in an unusable state — the research would yield no insights, and just be an unkind experience to people struggling to complete the tasks. I would have been frustrated advising that team.

I briefly consulted with an enterprise whose accessibility strategy was basically "bully people into compliance and make them feel bad". If you know anything about my approach, you know my accessibility coaching guide begins with "Don't be the police."

When I explained I wasn't going to go bully people in meetings — and instead presented an organized accessibility remediation program using leadership buy-in and quarterly targets for product teams, — the contract was ended while I was on my way to look at a condo. I was so very relieved.

As tired as I am of paying for my own health insurance, my return to corporate America will not include being miserable all day.

No amount of networking can overcome this job market

What I'm seeing right now in the wake of thousands of tech layoffs is the shell game corporations play with people's lives.

There was no reason to lay off all of those people at T-Mobile — AI is not replacing roles or making work faster like the press release said. If you're using AI, you know it takes an enormous amount of effort to set up tooling to make anything productive or useful in your workflow, and even longer to figure out how to use the output in a meaningful way.

AI is a convenient excuse to cover what really happens:

Companies lay people off to show the investor class they're ambitious, keeping their boring opex (operational expenditures — i.e. keeping the lights on) low. By laying off thousands of people, they get to show how they cut costs while profits still rose because of the work all those axed people performed. They then immediately turn around and hire back thousands of the same jobs as contractors, and call it exciting capex (capital expenditures — i.e. spending money to make money).

After being laid off, I was almost immediately contacted by contract recruiters with roles at my former employer. I passed on those "opportunities".

A solution will present itself

With money becoming cheaper (i.e. interest rates dropping) corporations will be growing headcount in 2025. It's already starting according to my recruiter friends, but that doesn't seem to follow in the accessibility and inclusion space just yet. Was accessibility just a fad? Are companies resigned to just paying off settlements for ADA complaints from now on? I'm not sure.

Whats' next? Radical innovation

Big picture, I'm thinking and writing a lot about a better way to create a market for enterprise accessibility. Niamh Kelly gave me the opportunity to talk about it at the Leaders for Accessibility conference, for which I'm very thankful. It's about 20 minutes and is unlike anything you've heard about accessibility.

Take care of you, and if you can, take care of someone else too.