Contract Front-end Developer - Accessibility

Job Description

The Micro:bit Educational Foundation is a global not-for-profit organisation with the aim of bringing micro:bit inspiration to children around the world. Our mission 'to inspire every child to create their best digital future' is delivered through a holistic offer of educational products, services and resources designed for teachers that appeal to a broad range of children including those who think tech might not be for them. Our work is grounded in the belief that an ability to understand, participate and work in the digital world is vitally important to a young person’s life chances and we should allow as many children as possible to have the opportunity to expand their own digital world.

Partnerships all over the globe have helped deliver the learning of digital creativity using micro:bit to over 56 million children globally and we aim to reach 100 million children impacted by micro:bit by 2028.

The Micro:bit Educational Foundation is looking to contract a front-end developer to improve the accessibility of the open source Microsoft MakeCode editor. This is a part time 3-6 month initial contract to facilitate initial integration of the latest Blockly accessibility tooling improvements to MakeCode, and preparing for user testing; with scope to continue the work over a 2 year period (although not full time) as we anticipate further contract work after Blockly have made their next rounds of adapations. Your work will empower and create a lasting positive impact on students, teachers, and partners across the globe.

The focus of this contract is specifically on improving the keyboard navigability, screen reader support and WCAG-compliance of MakeCode and its embedded Blockly-based code editor. Google are doing significant work to improve the accessibility of Blockly including funding organisations like the Micro:bit Educational Foundation to improve tools that integrate it.

MakeCode as a project pushes the limit of what can be done in the front-end, using React, TypeScript and Blockly in order to build a simple interface with limited infrastructure. You can look at the codebases you will be working on in the links at the end of this posting.

This role requires a deep grasp of our audience, and continuous collaboration with teams across The Foundation, inside Google Blockly and Microsoft MakeCode teams.

Requirements

Essential

• Practical experience of web application development.
• Knowledge of web accessibility standards, and experience implementing for keyboard and screen-reader support. 
• Experience with modern JavaScript or TypeScript and a reactive front-end web framework (Angular, React, Svelte, Vue or similar).
• Excited to learn new tools and approaches.
• Diligent in delivering robust and maintainable solutions.
• Empathetic and effective communication. 

Desirable

• Experience contributing to Open-Source projects. 
• Expertise in accessibility standards and guidelines, including WCAG, ARIA
• Experience in Blockly

If you don’t feel you match these requirements but are interested in the role, please feel free to apply and explain further those areas where you might need support or would like to develop your experience in your covering letter.

We estimate that there are more than 56 million children around the world learning to code with the BBC micro:bit. We have achieved this by working closely with engineering teams at our global partners, including Arm, Microsoft, MIT and Nominet. Through this partnership, the micro:bit is at the heart of a diverse ecosystem of hardware accessories, software editors and educational resource providers. A key role of the tech team at The Foundation is to support this ecosystem in growing and diversifying in an open way.

The Micro:bit Educational Foundation is committed to improving the diversity of our team. We actively seek and welcome applications from women, and from all sections of the community.

Benefits

Location - remote

This is a remote role but we anticipate the need for occasional face-to-face meetings in our office in Oxford, UK. This position would also have flexibility to work from the Oxford office more often if desired.

This role requires on average 2-3 days per week up to end of June 2025 but would benefit from more full time work during the early stages and flexibility to schedule the work around project commitments.

Application & recruitment schedule

Please could you send us a CV and covering letter explaining why you are suitable for the role, please include your day rate and any cost considerations. We will then be holding interviews to discuss the role further. Due to the urgency of this role we will be conducting interviews on an ongoing basis.

We are simultaneously recruiting for a full-time Front-end Developer. We only anticipate hiring one or other role, choosing the best candidate to fulfil our current needs.

We monitor our performance on hiring diversity, using an equal opportunities questionnaire at the end of the application process. This is viewed by the operations team only, the aggregated data is shared with the wider team. The questionnaire is optional and you have the choice to not answer any question, but is hugely valuable for us to understand our performance in this area. Equality Opportunities Questionnaire