Who We Are

We’re the Accessibility Squad at Wayfair, and we’re tackling exciting problems that make our digital products accessible for customers of all abilities. As the Accessibility Design Program Manager, you will own programs to encourage learning and support a cross-functional advocacy program of Accessibility, striving to inject accessibility best practices into the oxygen of Wayfair. 

How can we leverage WCAG success criteria and design best practices to improve accessibility in small ways and large ones? How can we strengthen our cross-functional partnerships to drive empathy and inclusion to create accessible experiences, together? How can we create tools to help designers and engineers learn accessibility techniques as they work? How can we make accessible and inclusive design fun and exciting?  If you’re interested in answering these types of questions, you’ll love our innovative and dynamic team!

What You’ll Do

A strong candidate will relish the opportunity to jump into a highly visible workstream that drives significant impact. You are an empathetic leader and skilled in design operations management. 

A typical day for you may look like running an empathy workshop in the morning and crafting guidelines for accessible carousel components in the afternoon. Or maybe you’ll analyze feedback on the accessibility checklist and improve the UI. Or maybe you will be presenting the a11y squads latest accessibility metrics to leadership and propose ways to improve. Or maybe you’ll be organizing a cross-functional program to showcase the business benefits of having a more human, more accessible experience for our customers.

Your Responsibilities

• Be a constant advocate for customers with disabilities of all kinds.
• Craft accessibility guidelines, resources, and education programs for designers and engineers to foster empathy and independent contribution to accessibility goals.
• Strategically close gaps in accessibility adherence and guidelines with customer, and business goals to support Wayfair’s mission of helping everyone, anywhere create their feeling of home.
• Create high impact accessibility initiatives that span design, product, engineering, customer support, and legal teams.
• Work closely with Accessibility and design system partners to strategize new approaches, tools and education.
• Regularly consult with the leadership and legal team on risk assessment and prevention.
• Create and regularly communicate clear, measurable accessibility goals intended to drive change throughout the organization.
• Support design, product and engineering leaders to address accessibility topics.
• Demonstrate strong communication skills. Be a strategist who can take a step back on overarching goals and opportunities, while also acting as a accessibility expert and program manager who can meticulously work alongside their teams with domain knowledge and program management prowess.
• Keep up with accessibility news and trends; knowledge share.
• Excel at balancing scope, time, quality and cost by level of effort to complete tasks, to exercise maximum impact in an agile manner.

What You’ll Need

• Passion for accessibility; expert level knowledge of accessible design and WCAG.
• Expert awareness of assistive technologies available to people with disabilities.
• An expert-level understanding of accessibility guidelines and regulations
• Intermediate knowledge of engineering and testing accessibility requirements.
• Comfort with screen readers and other assistive technologies is a plus.
• 5+ years of experience in a related role (Eng, Product Design, Program Management) with an expertise and passion for accessibility. A big plus if you have experience in e-commerce.
• Exceptional interpersonal, collaborative, and creative problem-solving skills.
• Strong understanding of design processes; knowledge of what is possible and what will be hard to achieve and/or implement in a digital environment.
• Expertise in producing relevant deliverables, including project plans, roadmaps, guidelines, playbooks and key comms to organize teams at scale.
• Experience that demonstrates unfailing advocacy for users of all abilities, highlighting operational work at scale to generate advocacy and adherence. Areas include: data-driven approach, collaboration across functions, stakeholder and leadership management, design operations, people management, and strategic thinking.

Interested in learning more about Wayfair’s Experience Design team?

Check out our Medium: https://medium.com/wayfair-design