Just curious, what do you guys actually do for a living?
Scrolling through comments here, you can tell there’s a huge mix of people, some clearly technical, some more creative, some who sound like they’ve been in the working world for decades, others who feel like students or early in their career.
No particular reason for asking, just genuinely curious what kind of professions make up this community. Feel free to keep it as vague or specific as you’re comfortable with.
Drop your profession below, and if you want, one thing about it people usually don’t expect.
I was 90% in SNF and assisted living. I did a few contract rotations that took me to acute. I went through the medicare payment changes which really made clear how admin was just working to manipulate metrics to get paid more (and yet the rehab department was a “loss” because we were a different branch of the company, so staff never got raises, just cuts) rather than accepting recommendations from the treating team. Being in a SNF during the height of Covid (find a side story/complaint below) really finished my burn out.
I went to a coding boot camp, and then got recruited by a friend turned coworker. It’s a nice, niche field if you can get into it, but a LOT of it is government work, so how important they find accessibility varies with the election cycle. That said, it’s probably a good time to get in. I work under the rehabilitation act of 1973, but a recent-ish ruling based in Americans with Disabilities Act is requiring that State and local government entities with a total population of 50,000 or more also have a baseline level of digital accessibility. Spoiler, most are not ready.
Side story: Covid was announced a public emergency or whatever in March 2020. Our company offered us a “hazard bonus”, but didn’t specify that their small print was that there had to be diagnosed covid in the facility. They also didn’t announce that they were only offering the bonus for six months. So when our building had covid sweep through in December 2020 (before vaccines were available), I was told to be providing physical therapy (close contact with heavy breathing) to people who ended up dying the next day with no vaccines and no hazard bonus. They also decided that some staff was not essential, so I totally got paid physical therapist wages to mop rooms and change linens.
interesting how long did you go from coding bootcamp to getting a job in digital accessibility?
A little over two years. However, I wasn’t aiming for accessibility per se. It sort of ended up falling in my lap and being a really good match to use the skills I had collected as a physical therapist.
Is there any certification you needed, or the accessibility training was just rolled up in the bootcamp? We’ve been doing a lot of training at work here for it (education) and I feel like a mini expert at this point.
Need is a strong word. I was hired without any, but they had been looking for someone for a while and were a touch desperate. I’ve since earned both my JAWS certification and DHS trusted tester. I’ve been “in progress” for the IAAP core competencies for years.
That said I walked in with a (clinical) doctorate degree, years of transferable experience, and a personal reference.
Education and eLearning is a great way in.
Super interesting! Do you work for a government entity? Would that be the place to start looking at opportunities?
Schools have gone the same way. Admin only cares about how much we can bill Medicaid - none of the $ trickles down to us and there’s little/no concern for kids who are struggling.
I work for a company that has a government contract (actually they have multiple government contracts, only a few of them in accessibility), but I work super closely with the team that works directly for the government.