The crisis is real: Where are the web accessibility professionals?
Like everyone in the web accessibility field, WebAIM has a vested interest in a sufficiently-sized community comprised of skilled professionals. The shortage of qualified talent is felt by all of us. But from where will these individuals come, and how can we accelerate their availability?
The personnel drought will continue
The need is here now, and it will continue. The Wall Street Journal indicated that many companies are looking for personnel with accessibility skills and that they can’t find them easily:
“The number of job listings with ‘accessibility’ in the title grew 78% in the year ending in July [2021] 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.”
A quick scan of job postings bears this out today. As of January 27, 2022, ZipRecruiter had nearly 45,000 positions referencing web accessibility. LinkedIn had over 3,100 jobs for [...]