95% of Frontend Developer jobs do not mention Accessibility and WCAG

I reviewed 100 jobs in the UK in July 2023

6 min readSep 2, 2023

Photo of a macbook on a table facing a window, there are airpods and a faux plant in view, code is on the screen.

Private companies will often cut corners. This can include deprioritising accessibility and discriminating against disabled people. As a product owner once said to me “business doesn’t do work it doesn’t have to.”

I started to wonder, just how bad is it in the UK? More specifically how bad is it within Frontend Development? I wanted to get some numbers so I analysed 100 Frontend Developer jobs with various variations of this title in July 2023.

Methodology

Using Linkedin Jobs, I searched the whole of the UK. I made a copy of the job details as well as various other pieces of data. This data can be viewed at the bottom of this post in various formats. There were two elements I was looking at:

Does the job description mention WCAG?
Does the job mention Accessibility?

Findings — only 5% of jobs mentioned WCAG and Accessibility

This was pretty grim, but inline with what I was noticing. Only 5% of Frontend Developer jobs mention both keywords.

19% made reference to Accessibility

This was slightly better, more listings made a reference to either Accessibility or Web Accessibility as a word but did not mention WCAG. A higher number, however I wondered if the actual role would take accessibility seriously in a meaningful way.

Other interesting notes

Only one company mentioned WCAG, Accessibility and aria this was a company called TorchBox, shout out to them.

I noticed even a Principal Front End Developer role at Sky, neither Accessibility or WCAG was mentioned. No points. Minus points. What is happening over there at Sky?

“Business doesn’t do work they don’t have to”

This ableist statement has been said to me as a justification just ignoring accessibility. As the law does not apply to private UK companies (yet) and there is no direct financial consequence why should they bother to do this work? Why should they care about disabled people?

There is a strong business case for digital accessibility but as we’ve seen with the launch of Threads, often the deprioritisation lies with people at the top. If Meta, a billion pound company is setting this type of tone across the tech industry it’s not suprising other companies are not bothering.

I often think; would apply to other industries? Would there be recruitment for an electrician where their work doesn’t need to meet any standards? A lawyer where they don’t have to comply with a set of regulations? I suppose my answer to this lies with the same structure, if businesses could, they properly would.

How has Frontend as a discipline got this stage where only 5% of jobs even mention WCAG and Accessibility? This is also in the UK, the birthplace of the world wide web and web standards. Legally we even have the Equality Act that aims to protect against disability discrimination.

There are very few technical standards and regulations in tech, in an ideal world meeting WCAG 2.1 AA should be as basic requirement. WCAG was published in 1995, unfortunately fast forward 28 years and we now have an entire generation of digital products, services and “best practice” that are exclusionary.

The The European Accessibility Act (EAA) will hopefully alter this mindset as financial consequence becomes possible.

Why else is this happening?

Mike Taylor wrote a great article called The “Backendification” of Frontend Development

When every developer on your team is a “JavaScript Ninja”, you’re actually leaving yourself exposed to [gaps in knowledge].

“No doubt applications everywhere are littered with tragic instances of <div className="btn" onClick={this.handleClick}>

“Who care’s, it works fine” you say? While it may work for an able-bodied person, those reliant on assistive-technologies will be completely unable to access parts of your application.”

He goes to say: “I believe the major shift from server-side to client-side applications pulled a large number of talented developers from the backend towards the front. With a much different set of strengths and weaknesses, these programmers started to shift the way frontend development is conducted to accommodate their own needs and preferences.”

I agree with all of his article, I feel like this goes a long way to tell the story of what is happening. As backend developers migrate to the front, the values of Frontend — accessibility, performance, progressive enhancement are diminished, creating a circular problem. People now higher up in the organisation hold the power to allocate hiring and resources and the cycle continues.

He also references the CSS article by Chris Coyier named “The Great Divide” which talks about how Frontend has fragmented and we need different titles and ways to describe the skillsets needed for these roles.

What are the solutions?

I’m really not sure, but the problem seems to be so widespread. I’m just going to mention the companies that don’t seem to care…

The companies that did not mention WCAG or Accessibility

Front-end Web Developer at ADLIB Recruitment
Frontend Software Engineer at Allen Recruitment Consulting
Frontend Engineer at Amicus
Senior Front End Engineer (Angular) at Apadmi
Web Developer at AQA
Frontend Developer at Babcock International Group
Frontend Developer at Be:technology
Front End Developer at Bonobo Recruitment
Educator, Web Developer at BrainStation
Frontend Developer at Burns Sheehan
Front End Developer at CGG
Senior Front End Web Developer at Citi
Senior Frontend Web Developer at Telegraph
Frontend Developer at Codeweavers Ltd
Senior Web Developer at Component Sense
Front end Developer at Corston Architectural Detail
Senior Front End Web Developer at Crimson
Web UI Developer at Deutsche Bank
Senior Frontend Engineer, Javascript (Remote) at DuckDuckGo
UI React Developer at eFinancialCareers
Web Developer at Facit Data Systems (x2)
Senior Frontend Engineer at Few&Far
Frontend Developer at Focus 5 Recruitment
Principal Frontend Engineer at Fresha
Front-end Developer at Friend MTS
Mid-Level Frontend Web Developer at Fruition IT
Senior Frontend Developer at hackajob
Front End Developer — VUE JS at Harrington Starr
Front End Developer at Hays
Front End Developer (Vue Or React) at Hays
Frontend Developer (UK) at HEAL Security
Front-end Developer at HIVED
Lead Frontend Engineer at Holland & Barrett
Frontend Web Developer at iomart
Senior Wordpress Developer at Itineris
Senior Wordpress Developer at Itineris
Senior Front-End Engineer at JPMorgan Chase & Co
Senior Developer at Kite Human Capital
Web Developer at KnoWho
Software Engineer — Frontend at Kwalee
Frontend Engineer at Laced
Web Developer at Langham Recruitment
Front-end Software Engineer — React at Lightyear
Frontend Developer at Mane Contract Services
Senior Front End Developer at Modulr
Front End Developer at NIQ Brandbank
Front End Developer at Noir
Frontend Developer at Oho Group Ltd (x2)
Front-end Developer (TypeScript, React.js) at Oliver Bernard
Lead Frontend Developer (React, TypeScript) — FinTech at Oliver Bernard
Senior Front End Software Developer at Ostara Systems Ltd
Front end Developer at Parexel
Web Application Developer at Pixable
Front End Engineer at Pontet
Front End Developer at Preferred Choice
Frontend Developer at qubit wallet
Senior Engineer (Frontend) at RAC
Wordpress Web Developer at RemoteWorker UK
Frontend Engineer at Revolution Technology
Digital Web Developer at SailGP
Web Developer at Scott Dunn
Frontend Developer at Searchability
Principal Frontend Engineer at Sky
Front End Vue.js Developer at Spamhaus Technology Ltd
Frontend Developer at Sprung Studios
Front End Developer (DXP) at The Weir Group PLC
Frontend Developer at Tiro Partners Limited
Frontend Engineer at TradingHub
Lead Frontend Engineer at Trust In SODA
Senior Frontend & Node.js Developer at UK Home Office
Frontend Engineer at Utility Warehouse
Frontend Developer at Venchr
Senior Front End Software Engineer at Viking UK
Frontend Developer at William Hill
Front-end Developer at Worldline
Senior Web Developer at Yao
Frontend Developer at Zeal Solutions

The data can be downloaded at:

https://chrisyoong.com/blog/frontend-but-accessibility-not-mentioned