About the survey
This survey of people who were laid off from accessibility roles was published on LinkedIn and the web-a11y slack channel.
It was shared by numerous people on LinkedIn, but got very little traction on the web-a11y slack channel.
Coupon code
- atomica11y - Use this code to unlock content in The Book on Accessibility for the next 3 months. And while you’re at it, check out AtomicA11y.com
The results
What type of organization were you working in?
What type of organization were you working in?
| What type of organization were you working in? | Percentage |
|---|---|
| Tech company | 48 |
| Government or public sector | 12 |
| Finance / insurance | 12 |
| Media / entertainment | 7 |
| Nonprofit | 4 |
| Higher education | 4 |
| Retail / e-commerce | 3 |
| Health insurance | 3 |
| Other | 7 |
Observations
Tech or tech adjacent clearly dominates with half the responses here. Past and current headlines strongly correlate to these results.
Lessons learned
Have strong technical and policy understanding of emerging tech
Think in terms of your skills and scope, not subject matter. I was a PM in accessibility who often said I’m a business professional not an a11y one. Don’t let a11y be the corner you paint yourself into. Soft skills matter just as much as technical
How did your accessibility job end?
Over 60% of us were swept up in a widespread layoff, while another 20% were laid off individually. 6% were fired, 8% resigned and 2% reported being re-org’d to a new role.
While the survey intent was to gather data from people who were laid off, 91% reported they lost their job. The other respondants reported their workload increased, resignations or change in role. It may be people perceived this survey as describing why they’re “open to work”.
How did your accessibility job end?
| How did your accessibility job end? | Percentage |
|---|---|
| I was part of a widespread layoff | 63 |
| I was individually laid off | 21 |
| I voluntarily resigned | 8 |
| I was terminated or fired | 6 |
| Re-org to a different role | 2 |
Takeaway
Large layoffs take place in spreadsheets, far removed from the day to day impact of our work. If current leadership doesn’t understand your work and its importance, they will overlook it when shown the proposal of job cuts — and they will not miss it.
Lessons learned
If I were to give any advice, it is to try to not take it personally, which is incredibly difficult.
Make friends in high places or make sure your supervisors understand your value. In my case, I didn’t want to play politics or suck up to anyone, which in part made it easy to eliminate my job.
How long had you been in that role?
Takeaways
Responses were evenly split between shorter and longer tenures; apparently not serving as an indicator of safety from layoff.
Lessons learned
Use the time you have to be productive but also to learn in anticipation of exit
Organization don’t care about who is being impacted or how many years you be have worked for the company. Whoever made the decision has a job and I don’t. Make a living from your hobby.
I would have kept looking for a new job even while I had mine. I was doing work I cared about in my dream job and I had no idea that it would suddenly be yanked away from me and I would be replaced by the company’s broken AI.
Take action
- Deliver reports and targets
- atomica11y - Use this code to unlock content in The Book on Accessibility for the next 3 months. And while you’re at it, check out AtomicA11y.com
What department was your program based in?
The responses from this question were quite mixed. Only 4% were in legal, 12% in QA functions, 18% in Engineering/Dev, 8% in product management and 19% in design. 16% reported their program being a mixed hub and spoke model. Another 12% of people were mixed across 12 other departments.
Takeaway
Over 60% of digital product oriented programs were embedded in a non-governance department (e.g., Design, Engineering or QA), making accessibility programs a peer to functions that deliver clear measurable outputs — rather than a governing position with a continuous improvement program.
Lessons learned
Fight the change. We were laid off because we sat within a restructuring, even though we also had strong ties with engineering and product, etc. Keep track of your business impact throughout the year, so they’re always at hand, like a defensive mechanism. Ultimately our fight failed, but I’m proud to say we tried by approaching other leadership.
Approximately how large was your organization?
Again, there was no significant standout organization size correlated to job loss.
Organization Size vs. Program Outcomes
Smaller organizations (<500 employees) were most likely to cut accessibility entirely, while enterprise organizations (>50k) mostly restructured or redistributed teams.
Accessibility seems safer in large organizations — but is often absorbed into other departments.
| Org Size | Program Laid Off Entirely | Reorganized/Downsized |
|---|---|---|
| <500 employees | 58% | 37% |
| 500–5,000 employees | 37% | 57% |
| 5,000–50,000 employees | 35% | 59% |
| >50,000 employees | 23% | 73% |
Lessons learned
Startups are fickle and more subject to swings in public sentiment and sales cycles than larger organizations. If you are sensing a shift trust your gut and start looking for a new role.
Ensure your not just a namesake on the team to check a box.
Learn more about how your business works and ask more questions during all-hands meetings about the state and direction of the business.
Actions to take
- Gain (and maintain) leadership buy-in
- Build the core program components
- Win friends, not battles
- Impact over control
- atomica11y - Use this code to unlock content in The Book on Accessibility for the next 3 months. And while you’re at it, check out AtomicA11y.com
What was your role before the layoffs? (select all that apply)
For this question, respondants could select multiple capacities in which they worked. It’s notable that the “One-person accessibility team” and those who selected multiple roles make up over half of the results.
Takeaway
A warning sign may be programs where people are expected to be all things, all the time — not just of structural fragility, but also for burnout.
Solo practitioners were mostly reactive, responding to audits, escalations, or internal requests — not building proactive systems.
The qualitative comments consistently referenced exhaustion, frustration, or cynicism — phrases like “I can’t do it all” and “nobody listened until it was too late.”
Lessons learned
I wouldn’t work any extra hours or responsibilities outside my contract description
Say no. I am a unicorn and they piled so much onto me. Also find a job that understands that they have to be flexible.
Make sure SME responsibilities are documented into the process and I’m not a PM on paper and SME in practice.
Actions to take
- Even as a team of one, have a program mentality, and build a market for accessibility
- Understand successful accessibility team composition
- Justify building team capabilites by tracking work
- Avoid fire drills
- atomica11y - Use this code to unlock content in The Book on Accessibility for the next 3 months. And while you’re at it, check out AtomicA11y.com
How would you describe the primary function of your accessibility program before the layoffs/reorg?
A majority (61%) characterized their program as an embedded improvement program (partnering with product, design & engineering to build accessibility into roadmaps and sprints). Establishing an embedded program feels like a victory, but it’s apparently not a fortress against layoffs.
Takeaway
As a whole, accessibility programs focused solely on testing/auditing were more likely to be eliminated, whereas programs embedded in product partnerships tended to survive via restructuring. Governance-style programs have the best survival rate. Other configurations tended to be re-org’d as well.
| Program Function | % Laid Off | % Reorganized |
|---|---|---|
| QA Testing / Audit teams | 48% | 43% |
| Embedded partnership programs | 33% | 36% |
| Governance / enforcement | 20% | 80% |
| Help desk / support | 50% | 50% |
| Other | 25% | 58% |
Actions to take
- Build a strategic program with strong policy and governance.
Lessons learned
I’d check the grade system, project roadmap the first day. If there are no detailed expectations from your role, and development within the role, the company may not know what the actual work is, and how to get it done. They won’t be able to evaluate your efforts.
Fight all out for policy, integrate into existing standards and substantiate ROI in business case.
Hindsight
In hindsight, a good follow up question would have asked about data and reports delivered to executive leadership to better understand the visibility of any of these program types.
Which of these best describes how your team worked with product and engineering?
The fragmentation and combination of answers shows the variety of how people perceive the function of their program. It’s notable 23% of respondants selected “We only got involved when issues were escalated” or in combination with that.
I would just recommend cultivating your network because this can happen suddenly and without warning.
Did your accessibility program have documented processes or regimens for teams?
44% had formal polices and regimens. 46% were less structured, with 39% reporting guidelines, but no consistent enforcement and 7% reporting no formal process, mostly ad hoc responses. The remaining 10% were focused on automated and/or repeatable testing integrated into pipelines.
Takeaways
Layoffs hit the structured and less disciplined organizations equally.
Lessons learned
Always have an exit strategy! My team was thriving and I was thriving as their leader… all they saw was an opportunity to get rid of a someone earning a good salary. Not much I could have done to prevent it.
If I could do anything differently in my previous role, I don’t think I would have changed my approach to the work itself — I was comfortable and effective in my responsibilities. However, I wish I had had more time to fully complete the accessibility documentation. Having comprehensive resources in place would have enabled the team to continue embedding accessibility into the product lifecycle even without an accessibility expert.
What would I have done differently? Nothing actually- we built an exceptional program.
Actions to take
- For every role define and measure commitments to accessibility
- atomica11y - Use this code to unlock content in The Book on Accessibility for the next 3 months. And while you’re at it, check out AtomicA11y.com
How did leadership explain the change?
Most layoffs were explained in the context of controlling costs (44%) or AI efficiency (9%), but in some cases respondants reported leadership specifically explaining accessibility wasn’t seen as priority (21%). 11.5% were folded into other teams, return to office claimed 3% while another 11.5% gave no explanation.
Takeaways
When combined, not seeing accessibility as a priority, cost cutting and AI reasons add up to 72%.
Lesssons learned
Find champions in your leadership team and help them to become passionate accessibility advocates. We had leadership team champions, but after they left, the impetus from the organisation to embed accessibility was lost.
Accessibility needs to be lead top-down. You need the leader to tell middle managers and staff that it’s important and to mandate change in training and culture. Without that, people have good intentions and lip-service with no action.
Actions to take
- Gain (and maintain) leadership buy-in
- Develop measurable strategic goals
- Talk about the business value of accessibility to anyone who will listen
- Speak to risk in business language
- atomica11y - Use this code to unlock content in The Book on Accessibility for the next 3 months. And while you’re at it, check out AtomicA11y.com
Do you believe your organization will rebuild accessibility capacity in the future?
While it’s natural 39% were unsure of their org’s future plans, 46% felt accessibility efforts would not be rebuilt. Only 15% responded “Yes”.
Lessons learned
I wouldn’t have done anything differently. As far as the future, that remains to be seen. I like to live in the present.
Process and mourn the loss but know your skills and passion are desirable to many other companies, it could take a while to see that come to be but it’ll happen. Build a network for opportunties, peer support and visiblity. A company pulling your disclipline is ironically a sign of success, if they dont think they need you, you’ve done a good job.
Footnotes
If you’d like to see the raw results minus any identifying data, reach out on LinkedIn. Obviously, this project is not endorsed by or connected to anyone but the author.
LLM Usage
ChatGPT was used to run blanket analysis and look for trends or connections between data and then spot-checked for accuracy/intent.
Caveats
This is obviously not a survey of the entire accessibility professional space. It is only intended to look for trends in people who have been laid off. Other organizatinos perform larger, more comprehensive surveys.
The author of the survey, Charlie Triplett is not a professional researcher, but care was taken to remove identifying information. Similar freeform responses were combined in meaningful ways that didn’t mischaracterize the results.
Accessibility
The charts are not as accessible as the author would like, so summaries or tabular data has been supplied alongside each chart.
Assumptions
It’s assumed that people answered responsibly and honestly.