My experience is that a11y is often not a priority and then one day it is suddenly the highest priority. It is not fun to have to drop everything you are doing and retrofit and/or redesign to avoid a lawsuit or losing a big contract.
The easiest thing you can do is run a linter with an a11y plugin to make sure you cover the basics. It can be annoying at first, but you'll get used to it.
A tool like axe (https://github.com/dequelabs/axe-core) is good for checking your work and/or automating away some of the less obvious stuff. It provides both a Chrome plugin and an automated checker for CI.
Getting comfortable enough with this stuff that it no longer requires a ton of work is definitely a good goal. Your users will have a better time overall and you'll have peace of mind.
I sent you a more detailed email, but basically it is preposterous to assume a "very experienced" senior engineer in ANY part of the United States is going to be happy with making $65K.
Those salary modifiers are atrocious. Their range in my city for a senior, very experienced engineer is comparable to what most entry level jobs actually offer around here.
I 100% think you are on the right track. The only people from my area that would take a GitLab salary just can't get a job elsewhere.
First and foremost, be nice. Secondly, you should assume that anything you "need" will not be built by anyone but you. If you end up with a "showstopper" in OSS, it is time for helpful contributions. Either that or you should find a different solution. A helpful contribution might including opening a civil dialogue about a feature. "Is this a feature that the project could consider within scope? How could I go about adding that feature?" Ask for guidance; don't demand solutions.
I would really encourage you to give it a try. The "jQuery mimicking" is actually not even its best feature. I didn't think much of it at the beginning, but it pretty much makes React's test utils really pleasant to work with. All in all, it basically codifies and gives a reusable api to most of what you say in your gist.
I appreciate the apology. My advice would be to take introductions from qualified applicants seriously. I do understand that you are a very busy person, but you should either hire someone to handle the hiring process or take the time to respond to with a simple "We went with someone else."
The easiest thing you can do is run a linter with an a11y plugin to make sure you cover the basics. It can be annoying at first, but you'll get used to it.
A tool like axe (https://github.com/dequelabs/axe-core) is good for checking your work and/or automating away some of the less obvious stuff. It provides both a Chrome plugin and an automated checker for CI.
Getting comfortable enough with this stuff that it no longer requires a ton of work is definitely a good goal. Your users will have a better time overall and you'll have peace of mind.