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Biggest Challenges Faced by an Accessibility Specialist at Salesforce

Haley's biggest challenge as an Accessibility Specialist at Salesforce is balancing the urgency of deadlines with the need for thorough accessibility training; the "rapid development nature" of such a large organization often means accessibility improvements, even after extensive QA and feedback, are delayed or deferred until later iterations.

Overcoming Challenges, Communication, Project Management, Workplace Challenges, Industry Realities

Advizer Information

Name

Job Title

Company

Undergrad

Grad Programs

Majors

Industries

Job Functions

Traits

Haley Shust

Accessibility Specialist

Salesforce

Elon University, 2015

Masters of Education in Curriculum & Instruction (focus: Digital learning); University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Biology & Related Sciences

Technology

Education

Took Out Loans, Worked 20+ Hours in School, Greek Life Member

Video Highlights

1. Balancing accessibility improvements with rapid development cycles is a significant challenge in large organizations.

2. Effective training and education require multiple sessions and one-on-one coaching to ensure teams understand and apply accessibility best practices.

3. Prioritization of accessibility can be difficult due to fast-paced development and deadlines, necessitating iterative improvements over time.

Transcript

What is your biggest challenge in your current role?

Eliciting change now, it's not to say that leadership isn't open to change, especially in regard to accessibility. The challenge is that Salesforce is so big and it moves so fast. Whenever I'm trying to educate a team about accessibility best practices, their deadline tends to come up real fast.

So, in order for me to train them in a way that they understand the best practices and can apply them, it's going to take multiple rounds of training, touching base, and offering one-on-one coaching. This might or may not align with how quickly their deadline is for a deliverable.

There have been many instances in which I conduct a QA and have a ton of feedback, only to find out that the deliverable has to go live today. We can't make any of these changes. Due to the rapid development nature and the need to push content out, sometimes we just can't prioritize accessibility in a way that might be desirable.

But it doesn't mean that we can't make iterations to improve on it over time. So that's an adjustment I've had to make. It's still a challenge working at such a large organization.

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