Abandoning the accessibility consultant career path

I still see accessibility as a crucial part for building digital products, but it's not my career path anymore to become an accessibility specialist.

I'm still very enthusiastic about accessibility, but I'm not happy about how things are in the industry at the moment.

IAAP certifications are broken and need to be fixed. One thing that is problematic is the certificate expiry. I get the point, people working in accessibility should know their stuff.

Still, the required certificate renewal lets it look like a money pit. Also, I dislike the gatekeeping. There shouldn't be any requirements to get the certificates IMHO.

Furthermore, these certificates shouldn't be necessary to work in accessibility, and some companies misconcept it like that; which can make it hard to get a foot in the door. You have a perfect vicious circle when certificates require work experience and the clients require certified people.

Another thing I was thinking about is that Accessibility audits are often pointless. Even easily fixable bugs are not addressed and rot in the backlog. Instead, a relauch in the future is promised, with a more accessible version of the product. But without further information on when this will be.

Additionally, you probably won't get to building software anymore as an accessibility specialist. Your main task is going to be to create accessibility audits. This feels like a step down, like being degraded from a Software developer down to a WCAG compliance tester.

In client work and enterprise contexts, accessibility is often about WCAG compliance, but not about really making the product as accessible as possible.

A further point I really dislike the Fear marketing regarding the European Accessibility Act. This is a strategy some accessibility consultants run and it quite tells that it's about compliance rather than real accessibility improvement efforts.

As I said in the opener, I'm still very enthusiastic about accessibility, but I'm not happy about how things currently are in the industry.

My focus is still on building user interfaces with accessibility in mind. But I want to build the things. I'm a lousy tester, I guess.

Also, I would like to get a more T-shaped skillset. I love to explore the Software Architecture field, while still keeping my strong focus on UI development, usability and accessibility.

Following that path, I hope I can have more impact and bring in my accessibility knowledge, from the position of a developer or maybe of a Software architect in the future.