Overview
Accessible Community, in partnership with Deque, Level Access, Pearson, and TPGi, coordinates the accessibility mentoring program. This program brings together emerging accessibility professionals with experts in the field. Mentors and protégés meet for an hour once or twice a month for 3-12 months. The activities include discussion prompts and an optional opportunity to assess a small organization’s website and discuss the results.
The goals for our mentoring program include:
- Supplementing limited educational opportunities in accessibility and universal design by providing hands on experience.
- Helping small businesses and community organizations become more inclusive of people with diverse abilities.
- Building a workforce of educated professionals by engaging and inspiring them about creating a more inclusive world.
We match protégés with mentors as mentors become available. We do our best to prioritize requests who have been waiting for a mentor for a while but we also strive for a good match in skills and location.
We provide activities and discussion prompts to help make the mentoring as productive and easy as possible. Some pairs choose to use these and others choose to follow their own discussion topics.
When enrolled in the mentoring program, we will provide opportunities to join activities like certification study groups, interview workshops and more so even when protégés are not matched immediately they will have a chance to learn.
Who Can be a Mentor?
We are looking for mentors with at least 5, preferably 10, years of experience in web and software accessibility though we accept some mentors with less experience accessibility but additional experience in a related field such as development, design, user experience (UX), policy, etc.
We are also looking for mentors in:
- Universal Design
- ADA Compliance
- Occupational Therapy
The ideal mentor is patient, creative, and prepared to share their passion and knowledge for this field with others. If you are interested in becoming a mentor or if your company would like become a partner, please complete the mentor registration.
Who Can be a Protégé?
We are looking for individuals who have:
- taken at least one accessibility-related training or certification and have 1-5 years of experience in web or software accessibility, or
- are self-trained and have 2-5 years of experience in web or software accessibility.
Accessibility specialties include design, development, testing, user experience (UX), or other related areas of digital accessibility. The ideal protégé is self-motivated, creative, and prepared to learn.
Apply using our protégé registration.
Questions?
Contact mentoring@accessiblecommunity.org if you have any questions.
Accessible Community is an equal opportunity organization. All applicants will be considered without attention to race, color, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, or disability status.
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