Senior Accessibility Specialist
£65,000 per annum
Bedford
Permanent
Hybrid Working


Join us at the Money and Pensions Service (MaPS) as a Senior Accessibility Specialist.
An accessibility specialist provides support, advice and guidance to other roles in the Money and Pensions Service about how to create accessible digital services.
You will use knowledge of accessibility guidelines, provide technical expertise and bring the voice of disabled users to ensure that product teams make digital services that can be used by everyone. In addition to providing expert guidance, this role will also take hands-on responsibility for accessibility assurance across digital learning outputs, ensuring compliance with agreed standards.
A senior accessibility specialist works with people at a range of role levels to embed accessibility into the output of teams.
Key Responsibilities:


As a Digital Accessibility Specialist at Money and Pensions Service (MaPS), you will contribute to improving engagement, customer satisfaction and ultimately the financial wellbeing of millions of people across the UK, particularly those most in need.
You will use your digital accessibility knowledge and skills to ensure our digital products and services are accessible and inclusive. You will be responsible for assuring our digital products not only meet legal accessibility requirements, but are also desirable, effective, and usable for users with access needs. You will also work with the rest of the UCD team to champion and evolve our accessibility assurance and inclusive design and research practices and align them with the Service Standard.
Your skills and experience will help MaPS achieve our mission of helping everyone in the UK make the most of their money and pensions. At this role level, you will work with service managers and product owners to ensure our digital products are delightfully accessible, have responsibility across complex services, help set direction and embed good practice within teams and make important decisions based on research and understand how this research impacts others.


*Coach and mentor more junior colleagues
*Input into accessibility strategy with business areas or teams
*Create and deliver accessibility training
*Engage with teams across different levels and capabilities
*Potentially manage or lead individuals or sub-teams
*Engage with and contribute to the cross-government accessibility community


Essential Skills and Experience:


*Advise and coach product, design, research and engineering teams on building accessible digital services end to end, from discovery through live.
*Plan and conduct detailed accessibility testing (automated, manual and with assistive tech), interpret results, and prioritise fixes with teams.
*Champion compliance with WCAG 2.2 AA and related public sector accessibility regulations; maintain accessibility statements and evidence for service assessments.
*Embed accessibility in delivery practices, patterns and component choices in MaPS’ own design system; contribute to best practice guidelines
*Run workshops, critiques, and training to raise capability across disciplines; provide introductory awareness and training about accessibility; create practical guidance tailored to varied skill levels.
*Provide governance and assurance, including audits, risk articulation, test strategies, and clear recommendations to senior stakeholders.
*Represent disabled users and people with access needs in decision making, ensuring user research and analytics inform accessibility priorities.
Skills & experience:
*Strong technical understanding of accessibility — practical knowledge of HTML, CSS, JavaScript patterns and common barriers; fluent with assistive tech (screen readers, magnifiers, voice input).
*Demonstrable experience testing to WCAG 2.2 AA and guiding teams to resolve issues; confident selecting tools and methods at each stage.
*Clear, credible consultancy and communication with multidisciplinary teams and senior stakeholders, participating in agile "health checks" and translating findings into delivery plans.
*Ability to set direction, build consensus, challenge teams and lead accessibility across multiple services; ability to make decisions characterised by medium levels of risk and complexity
*Ability to identify, communicate and work within constraints; ability to challenge the validity of constraints and ensure standards are being met.
*Evidence of governance and assurance work — audits, statements, risk logs, and service assessment preparation.
*Strong user focus — ability to bring disabled users’ perspectives into design and delivery decisions.
*Experience training colleagues in accessibility.
*Experience creating accessible documentation (Word, PowerPoint, PDF) at scale.
*Familiarity with the GOV.UK Design System and patterns to accelerate compliance with WCAG 2.2.
*Understanding of the GOV.UK Service Standard and how accessibility intersects with discovery, alpha, beta and live assessments.
*Familiarity with building Assisted Digital services.
*Experience in the public sector or other regulated field (e.g. financial services, medicine, law).

We don’t require a portfolio, but if you have one, we’d love to see it. Examples of accessible digital products or services you have contributed to or led on would be of interest. If not, we’d like a short statement (around 500 words or less) which shows how your projects or experience demonstrate the abilities in this job description.