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The crisis is real: Where are the web accessibility professionals?

A WebAIM article with some real food for thought.

“The number of job listings with ‘accessibility’ in the title grew 78% in the year ending in July [2021] from the previous 12 months”. That’s on top of the 38% increase from the previous year. By 2027, the global accessibility testing market is poised to hit $606 million. Demand for accessibility professionals has never been higher.

But there’s relatively low take-up amongst newcomers to the industry. “WebAIM’s 2021 Survey of Web Accessibility Practitioners had a significantly higher level of respondents that were over the age of 45 (37.3%) than did the 2020 Stack Overflow survey of web professionals as a whole (8.9%).” The article suggests that the industry may reach chronic shortages when these individuals retire.

The article blames a lack of mandatory accessibility teaching in higher education, and calls for companies to pay accessibility professionals higher salaries to attract more people into this part of the industry.

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