Accessibility job postings are up. On a11yjobs.com, even at the end of the year, when things typically slow down, the volume differs meaningfully from what it was even six months ago. Recently, I saw 17 new roles in a single day. That used to be closer to what showed up over two weeks.

More listings sound like good news, right? The details inside the listings tell a more complicated story. Many organizations are hiring. Fewer employers are hiring in ways that signal their accessibility programs are durable. And even fewer still provide a living wage in expensive areas.

The volume increased, yet the role design often stayed stuck

A spike in postings may indicate investment in accessibility programs. However, it can also mean organizations are reacting to deadlines, enforcement risk, policy shifts, or backlog pressure. Whatever the cause, the way hiring professionals describe the work in the postings reveals how they think accessibility happens.

Currently, many postings suggest that organizations still treat accessibility as an add-on function rather than a product capability that requires staffing, processes, and sustained leadership attention.

There are seven patterns I am seeing in recent accessibility job postings.

Pattern #1: Many teams want unicorn skills combined with peanuts for pay

A large share of job descriptions read like a full program compressed into a single role. Strategy and governance. Design review and design system experience. Engineering consultation. QA and audit execution. Training. Procurement support. Document remediation. Vendor management. Reporting and metrics. Sometimes, even legal coordination and incident response. If you can do that type of work and do it well, that’s great, but most don’t have that breadth of experience.

Here is why this is problematic: when one role is expected to carry an entire program, the organization is not hiring an employee. It is outsourcing program design to whoever accepts the offer. That usually leads to one of two outcomes.

• Either the role becomes triage, and the organization never builds durable capability.

• Alternatively, the hire burns out and leaves, and the organization reposts the same role.

Regardless of the outcome, it is also a signal that funding will be a battle, and unpaid overtime is almost guaranteed. Moreover, you will never be able to “exceed expectations” in your review, since the expectations are clearly unrealistic.

Pattern #2: “Entry level” means entry level pay, not entry level qualifications

Another pattern appears in roles labeled “entry-level” with titles and compensation at the “starter role” level, combined with requirements for years of experience, advanced technical fluency, and a desire for certifications. The requirements describe someone who can operate independently on day one, influence cross-functional teams, and handle complex implementation tradeoffs. The pay is comparable to that of running a fast-food restaurant.

This mismatch is not just frustrating for candidates; it is costly for employers. Turnover is the most expensive factor that doesn’t appear on a budget line item. People take the job because they are desperate, and then leave as quickly as possible. Additionally, qualified individuals often self-select out when they encounter a job description that signals underleveling, as it is a sign of limited career growth.

If a team wants entry-level talent, the posting should reflect that. Clear scope, structured mentorship, training budget, and responsibilities that grow over time. If the team requires someone who can deliver independently, the title and compensation must reflect that reality.

Pattern #3: Title II pay often signals a desire for accessibility compliance, not accessibility competence

Most Title II organizations have real accessibility obligations, timelines, and public accountability. Accessibility work in that context can carry high operational and reputational risks. Yet compensation for these roles often does not match the scope implied by the posting.

Low pay communicates that accessibility is treated as a compliance line item rather than infrastructure. It becomes harder to recruit experienced practitioners who have already learned, often the hard way, what it takes to build sustainable programs that get organizations where they want to go.

Public sector budgets are real constraints. Still, organizations can improve outcomes by defining roles realistically, building teams rather than assigning single points of responsibility, and investing in systems that reduce repetitive remediation work.

Pattern #4: In office requirements are rigidly common

You’ve found the perfect job. It looks like the job description was written for you, and the pay is what you are looking for. And then, boom, you get to the part where it says you have to be physically in the office three to five days a week, 1500 miles away. Even when the day-to-day work is documentation review, design collaboration, code review, testing coordination, and training, many postings still require in-office presence. Sometimes the requirement is framed in cultural terms. Sometimes it is framed as collaboration. It is never framed as optional.

The impact is straightforward. Especially in the field of accessibility, required in-office work reduces the candidate pool and disproportionately filters out qualified practitioners with disabilities, caregiving responsibilities, or location constraints. It pushes organizations toward smaller, more expensive recruiting funnels, then leadership wonders why it is taking so long to find a qualified candidate.

Hybrid and remote models are not perfect. They do, however, align well with the core workflows of most mid to senior-level accessibility roles. If an organization insists on maintaining an office presence, it should be prepared to justify the operational need and then accept the recruiting trade-offs.

Pattern #5: Jobs are moving to lower-cost areas

Another trend is the increase in roles tied to lower-cost locations, either through location-based salary bands or explicit requirements that candidates be based in specific regions. Sometimes this shows up as a subtle narrowing of approved work locations. Sometimes, it is a clear shift in where teams are building accessibility headcount.

Organizations will always manage compensation budgets. The risk to the employer is when location-based decisions override the desire to build a competent program.

If the work serves a national or global product, the organization still needs senior capacity and cross-functional influence. Moving the role to a lower-cost area does not change the complexity of the work. It changes the pool of candidates who can afford to take the job.

Pattern #6: Reposts raise uncomfortable questions

Some organizations repeatedly repost the same role every month. At a certain point, that pattern becomes a signal that can indicate a number of things about the program, most of them bad.

1) The compensation is not competitive.

2) The job scope is too broad.

3) The hiring process is not doing a good job at skills assessment.

4) The role is not supported internally, and hires leave quickly.

5) There is no alignment on what success looks like.

6) The organization really doesn’t know what it’s looking for

7) The organization doesn’t have a “real” job and is collecting resumes for future needs or visa requirements.

Candidates notice. So do other hiring managers. A monthly repost becomes part of the employer brand, whether the organization intends that or not. There are well-known companies I will never apply to because they repeatedly post the same job, and there are no social media announcements about people accepting the previously posted position.

Pattern #7: Jobs are with agencies and are short-term 1099 contracts, not benefited employee positions

Short-term 1099 accessibility roles create real risk for practitioners with disabilities who rely on stable health insurance. C This is a poverty trap when pay exceeds the Medicaid eligibility threshold, especially given the recent elimination of health care subsidies on the federal exchange. Contract work without benefits frequently forces candidates with disabilities to choose between employment and health insurance.

Agency-based contracts often result in noticeably lower take-home pay because a significant portion of the rate gets skimmed off the top and never reaches the worker. The organization pays a premium, the agency takes its share, and the person doing the work gets whatever is leftover.

There is a deeper morale cost as well. Many contract roles focus on logging issues, writing reports, and moving on before remediation happens. When you never see fixes land, accountability blurs, and the work starts to feel transactional rather than meaningful. Accessibility work needs continuity to succeed, and short-term contracting undermines that continuity at every level.

What these patterns cost

When job design is misaligned, the costs show up quickly.

The time to fill the job increases as fewer candidates meet the requirements at the offered level. Program outcomes degrade because the role becomes reactive and backlog-driven. Retention suffers because the work expands faster than support. Stakeholders lose confidence because accessibility feels like a constant emergency rather than a managed capability.

In Title II contexts, the cost may include failures of public accountability. In private-sector contexts, it can encompass litigation risk, contract risk, and market-access risk. In all contexts, it often entails delayed product delivery because teams repeatedly rediscover the same accessibility issues late in the release cycle.

What better accessibility hiring looks like

Better-accessibility job postings share several traits.

The role is defined as part of a system. The job description clarifies what the role owns and what it influences. It names partner teams. It describes how decisions get made. The job separates programs' leadership from hands-on execution. Most importantly, the job does not have an agency in the middle doing very little for their cut.

If a role sets strategy and governance, it should not also be responsible for executing every audit and every remediation plan. If a role is an implementer, it should not be asked to carry program-wide governance without authority.

The job aligns seniority, pay, and expectations. Entry-level roles should include training and mentorship. Senior roles have authority, cross-functional support, a budget, and compensation commensurate with the responsibilities.

If work can be done effectively remotely, say so. If an in-office presence is required, explain why in operational terms. Don’t call a job remote if it is hybrid. These are not the same things.

Final Thoughts

The increase in accessibility job postings is real. The question is whether organizations are building accessibility capacity or increasing the number of roles with fatal flaws, meaning they will never succeed.

Accessibility hiring is capacity building. Teams that treat it as infrastructure will hire, support, and retain differently. Organizations that do not will continue to post, search, and wonder why the pipeline appears busy while outcomes remain uneven.