Director, Inclusive Design & Accessibility

Unum Group • Chattanooga, TN

3d • Onsite

About The Position

The Director, Inclusive Design & Accessibility leads a centralized UX design practice and owns the enterprise capability for inclusive design and digital accessibility. The role combines people leadership with standards, governance, education, tooling, and cross-functional influence to embed accessible, user-centered practices throughout the software development lifecycle. This is a campus-based, onsite position.

The director manages and develops UX designers, sets expectations for design quality and professional practice, and provides design leadership across digital products. The role champions diverse user needs and guides teams in applying inclusive design and accessibility throughout research, design, development, testing, and production. It partners across Product, Engineering, Architecture, Quality, DevOps, Risk, Legal, and Compliance to establish accessibility requirements, practices, verification, and shared accountability.

The position owns accessibility standards, governance, and enablement; serves as a senior subject matter expert on WCAG conformance, assistive technology compatibility, accessible patterns, and digital barriers; and builds scalable guidance, learning, and measurement practices. The director measures adoption, capability, quality, defect trends, risk, and process effectiveness, and maintains an improvement roadmap.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent relevant experience in UX, design, technology, engineering, business, or a related field.
• Typically 10 or more years of progressive experience in UX, digital product development, accessibility, or related disciplines, including people leadership.
• Demonstrated experience developing talent, planning capacity, assigning work, and building design capability in a complex organization.
• Deep working knowledge of WCAG and the ability to translate success criteria into practical design, content, engineering, and testing expectations.
• Working knowledge of ADA, Section 508, and related U.S. accessibility requirements, with judgment about when to engage Legal and Compliance.
• Hands-on familiarity with assistive technologies and evaluation methods, including screen readers, keyboard operation, magnification, voice input, automated checks, and manual testing.
• Expertise in user-centered design, interaction design, information architecture, prototyping, usability evaluation, design critique, and design systems.
• Experience integrating UX and accessibility into Agile product delivery with Product, Engineering, Quality, and business partners.
• Strong coaching, facilitation, executive communication, influence, change leadership, prioritization, and conflict-resolution skills.

Nice To Haves

• Accessibility credential such as IAAP CPACC, WAS, or CPWA, or equivalent demonstrated expertise.
• Experience establishing enterprise accessibility governance, operating models, reusable frameworks, or maturity improvements.
• Experience in insurance, financial services, healthcare, or another regulated industry.

Responsibilities

• Manage, coach, and develop UX designers through performance management, career development, succession planning, and ongoing feedback.
• Align assignments, capacity, and skills with product priorities, and identify staffing and capability gaps.
• Set expectations for design quality, inclusive design, user-centered methods, documentation, collaboration, and professional practice.
• Provide design leadership across digital products, balancing user needs, business outcomes, usability, and accessibility.
• Build an inclusive, psychologically safe culture of learning, accountability, and continuous improvement.
• Champion diverse user needs, contexts, abilities, and barriers from discovery through production.
• Establish practices for research collaboration, usability evaluation, accessible annotations, design-system use, and cross-functional handoffs.
• Guide teams in applying inclusive design and accessibility to interactions, information architecture, content, prototypes, and production experiences.
• Connect user evidence, accessibility needs, business outcomes, technical feasibility, and risk in stakeholder recommendations.
• Define accessibility practices across planning, discovery, requirements, design, development, testing, release, and monitoring.
• Partner with Product, Engineering, Architecture, Quality, DevOps, Risk, Legal, and Compliance to embed requirements, acceptance criteria, checkpoints, and verification.
• Create scalable templates, checklists, annotations, definitions of done, review practices, and escalation paths.
• Promote early engagement and shift-left practices to prevent barriers and reduce avoidable production defects.
• Clarify shared accountability while delivery leaders retain responsibility for implementation, testing, remediation, and release.
• Establish accessibility standards aligned with organizational commitments, applicable requirements, and recognized guidelines.
• Serve as senior subject matter expert for WCAG conformance, assistive technology compatibility, accessible patterns, and digital barriers.
• Curate approved resources and tooling for design review, code analysis, manual evaluation, assistive technology testing, validation, and monitoring.
• Partner with governance bodies and leaders to identify risk, support escalation, prioritize improvements, and incorporate expert and user feedback.
• Build role-based learning, coaching, office hours, champion networks, and reusable guidance.
• Measure adoption, capability, quality, defect trends, risk, and process effectiveness, and maintain an improvement roadmap.

Benefits

• Onsite fitness facilities
• Generous paid time off
• Employee professional development programs
• Healthcare benefits, including health, vision, and dental
• Short- and long-term disability insurance benefits
• Performance-based incentive plans
• 401(k) retirement plan with employer match up to 5% and an additional 4.5% contribution whether or not the employee contributes

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Director