Web Accessibility Tester in Illinois

Web Accessibility Testing in Illinois

We are hiring a screen-reader user to test client websites. An audit covers 55 WCAG rules at A and AA. We checked how far a scanner gets with each one. Three it mostly handles. Another 27 it can only start. A person has to finish those. The last 25 it cannot find at all, which is the reason this job exists.

A client tells us which tasks matter to them. Usually that means buying a product or starting a refund. From the first click to the last, you run that task. Somewhere it stops working. You write down which step you were on and what your screen reader said. A developer can then see the same problem in a minute instead of a week.

Most people do not believe this part. You do not need an accessibility job on your resume to apply. If you run a screen reader every working day, you already have the part of this work that cannot be taught. We teach you the rest. That means the 55 rules and the report format. It also means the words that make a developer fix what you found.

The work does not stop when we send the report. You go back after they make the fixes and check them. That sounds easy until you have done it a few times. Many fixes only move the problem somewhere else.

Your Accessibility Testing Work

• Do client tasks from start to finish with your own screen reader and keyboard.
• Log the step that stopped you and what your screen reader said when it did.
• Check pages against WCAG 2.1 Level AA. We teach you the rules as you go.
• Describe each problem so a developer can see it without calling you.
• Test it again after they fix it. Say clearly whether the problem is gone or has only moved.

Screen-Reader Skills You Will Need

• A screen reader is part of your day rather than something you switch on to test with.
• You know your main one very well. That could be JAWS or NVDA or VoiceOver.
• When we write, you write back. Dates we agree together are dates you keep.

Experience That Helps If You Have It

• You have been paid to test or audit accessibility before.
• You have used VoiceOver on a phone or tablet.

Accessibility Training and Working Hours

This can be your first accessibility testing role, because the training is built for people who have never done the job before. What you do need is to run a screen reader well, since that is the part we cannot teach you. Training happens on-site in Chicago. If you are joining from elsewhere in Illinois, we train you remotely.

As an independent contractor you work 5 to 10 hours per week and choose when to work them. We agree the deadlines with you before any work starts. One honest limit. This is ongoing part-time work rather than a full-time job.

After the first audit the work continues. You go back to retest the fixes a client has made. You also check new pages as they appear. Plenty of those fixes will still be wrong when you check them. Saying so is the job.

Why We Test With Screen Readers

Checking a site with a scanner alone is like checking a car from the dashboard. The warning lights tell you something real. They do not tell you whether it drives. We keep a library of 432 fix techniques. We have graded 356 of them for whether a scanner can answer them without a person. Ten can. The other 346 need a person to check by hand. That grading is ours rather than W3C's, because W3C publishes no figure of this kind at all. So a clean scanner report covers ten techniques out of 356. The rest of the audit is people. You would be one of them. When a client asks whether a fix really worked, the answer comes from somebody who ran the task again.