Latest / The Side Hustle Career Podcast with Fexingo: Second Income, Freelancing While Employed / How an Admin Assistant Built a 5000 Monthly Side Hustle in Accessibility Consulting
Transcript
- Lucas: So Luna, I want to talk about a side hustle that is both growing fast and genuinely under the radar. Most people have never heard of it, but the market is projected to hit over a hundred billion dollars by 2030. Luna: You're going to say accessibility consulting, aren't you? Lucas: Exactly. Digital accessibility. Making websites and apps usable for people with disabilities — screen readers, keyboard navigation, color contrast, all of that. And the story I want to anchor on is a woman named Mia. She was an administrative assistant at a mid-sized insurance company. Two years ago, she started freelancing in accessibility testing on the side. Now she's billing five thousand dollars a month. Luna: That is a huge jump from an admin assistant salary. How did she even get into this? Lucas: It started because she had a blind colleague who constantly struggled with the company's internal software. Mia spent some afternoons helping him file reports, and that got her curious about screen readers. She took a free online course on Web Content Accessibility Guidelines — WCAG — and then a cheap certification from the International Association of Accessibility Professionals. Cost her about three hundred dollars total. Luna: So the barrier to entry is basically zero. But where do the five thousand a month come from? Is she doing full website audits? Lucas: Mostly small to medium-sized businesses that need a baseline audit. Her typical project is a ten-page website review — she runs automated tools, does manual testing with a screen reader, and writes a report with prioritized fixes. She charges between fifteen hundred and twenty-five hundred per audit. So three to four clients a month gets her to five K. Plus she does some hourly work testing new features for app developers at fifty dollars an hour. Luna: That's interesting because I know the demand has really spiked in the last couple years, especially after the ADA lawsuits against a bunch of e-commerce sites. But are there enough clients to sustain that? Lucas: The data says yes. A recent study showed that only about three percent of the top million home pages are fully accessible. And the Department of Justice has been enforcing Section 508 more aggressively — that's the federal law for government technology. Plus, fintech and e-commerce companies are voluntarily investing because they realize they're excluding a huge customer base. Globally, people with disabilities have over a trillion dollars in disposable income. Luna: Right, it's both compliance and good business. So what skills does someone need to start? Is it highly technical? Lucas: You need some basic HTML — enough to understand how tags and attributes affect screen reader output. You need patience and attention to detail. And you need empathy — the ability to put yourself in the shoes of someone who can't see the screen or can't use a mouse. Mia actually said the most important thing she learned was how to ask users with disabilities about their pain points. That's what made her reports actionable. Luna: What about the technical certifications? Are they necessary to get clients? Lucas: Not strictly, but they help. The IAAP Certified Professional in Accessibility Core Competencies is the gold standard. It costs about four hundred dollars for the exam, and it's respected. Mia landed her first three clients on LinkedIn just by listing that certification and offering a free ten-minute audit. She'd record a Loom video showing a specific accessibility issue on their homepage and suggest a fix. That's a powerful cold outreach tactic. Luna: That's smart. And I imagine the legal risk for companies is a big motivator. A single ADA lawsuit can cost fifty to a hundred thousand dollars just in legal fees, not to mention the settlement. Lucas: Exactly. And the plaintiff's bar is very active. So for a small business, paying a freelancer two thousand dollars for an audit is cheap insurance. Mia says she often pitches it as: 'For the cost of one hour with a lawyer, I'll give you a full report that reduces your risk.' Luna: By the way, if we've helped you think through a career move or reconsider what's possible, consider supporting the show. It keeps us ad-free and independent. You can find us at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Lucas: Yeah, we really appreciate that. And the support honestly helps us dig into more niche stories like this one. So, back to Mia — she also learned a hard lesson early on about scope creep. Luna: What happened? Lucas: Her first big client, a regional bank, asked for an audit of their main website. She quoted fifteen hundred for ten pages. But they kept coming back with 'while you're at it, can you check our mobile app too?' She ended up spending forty hours for the same flat fee. Now she has a very strict scope document and charges for any page over the agreed limit. Luna: That's a classic freelancer mistake. But it sounds like she figured it out. What's her next step? Lucas: She's building toward a full-time income. Her goal is eight thousand a month by the end of this year. She's planning to bundle services — accessibility audits with user testing, and maybe even offer remediation support, like actually fixing the code. That would let her charge premium rates. Luna: So the ceiling is pretty high. Are there any other niches within accessibility she's considering? Lucas: She's looking at document accessibility — making PDFs, Word docs, and PowerPoints screen-reader friendly. That's a huge market especially for government contractors and universities. Many organizations don't realize their PDFs are completely inaccessible. And it's less technical than web audits. You can learn it in a weekend. Luna: That's a great tip. For our listeners, what's the single best resource to start? Lucas: The Web Accessibility Initiative's free tutorials on W3.org. And the free screen reader NVDA for testing. That's all you need to get started. From there, take the IAAP certification, build a portfolio of three sample audits, and start cold pitching on LinkedIn. It's not glamorous, but it works. Luna: And for someone currently in a job like Mia's — administrative, customer service, anything — this feels like a realistic pivot. The skills overlap more than people think. Lucas: Absolutely. Patience with users, detail orientation, problem-solving. Those are core admin skills. Mia just repackaged them into a compliance niche that's exploding. She went from thirty-five thousand a year to sixty-five thousand a year in eighteen months. And she works from her dining table two hours a night. Luna: That's the dream. Alright, next episode we'll look at how a stay-at-home parent built a side hustle in virtual bookkeeping. Spoiler: it's not what you'd expect. Lucas: Looking forward to it. Until then, keep hustling.