"She was a graduate of a developer bootcamp with past experience assisting people with real-world accessibility issues."
That's one of the best "boot camp" use cases I've ever heard. An accessibility engineer like that doesn't necessarily need to be able to actually code up a backend with a database, etc, but is going to be greatly handicapped if they literally know nothing about the web and can't even show off a prototyped-up page with the new markup they are proposing. They don't need a full "computer science" education, a boot camp is a perfect bootstrap. (I'd still say there's things yet to learn, but when isn't that true?)
Sure, but where do they get their second tech job? Site accessibility engineer is not a common job title/position that I know of. Without some of those skills you mention, if not the corresponding formal education, that seems like this person is set up to fail soon, unless companies really start taking accessibility seriously in the next few years.
I dunno; if they're like most developers I know, they'll end up picking up a hodgepodge of skills that they missed in the bootcamp, which will let them plump out their resume.
If they can't figure out how to write their resume after they've had the experience, I don't feel too bad for them.
Accessibility consulting pays bonkers money these days due to the demand; even the a11y places like Deque and Usablenet are being asked for on-site a11y practitioners and they can’t find enough of them to refer companies to.
From reading the other comments in this thread, it seems that companies are starting to take accessibility seriously, and an experienced site accessibility engineer will not have any issues getting another job.
That's one of the best "boot camp" use cases I've ever heard. An accessibility engineer like that doesn't necessarily need to be able to actually code up a backend with a database, etc, but is going to be greatly handicapped if they literally know nothing about the web and can't even show off a prototyped-up page with the new markup they are proposing. They don't need a full "computer science" education, a boot camp is a perfect bootstrap. (I'd still say there's things yet to learn, but when isn't that true?)