IAAP WAS Certification — A Worthwhile Offering or Missed Opportunity?

A photo of the moon seems fitting for an exam that necessitated many late nights pouring over notes. Photo by Ganapathy Kumar on Unsplash.

In December 2021, I sat the International Association of Accessibility Professional’s Web Accessibility Specialist certification (IAAP WAS) exam for the first time, and was notified later that month of a passing grade (yay!). Having spent a lot of time over the year prior reviewing the Deque University preparation course, and nearly 6 months of relentless, focused study in my personal time — well, was it worth it?

The WAS certification always appeared to me to be one of those accreditations for ‘other people’ and that it was somewhat mysterious and out of my reach. Why was that? Maybe the requirement for 3–5 year’s experience before sitting the exam (which I do have, incidentally), or the focus on technical standards, ARIA, HTML, JS and CSS while not being in a code-contributing role. Additionally, a passing grade for only 58-60%* of first time takers didn’t fill me with much confidence either. And shhhh, did someone say imposter syndrome?

But having already achieved the CPACC certification 2 years prior, it was time to set myself the challenge — not only to build on my knowledge in a very focused and structured way (and validate the largely self-taught knowledge I built up on-the-job), but to prove my commitment to our users with disabilities, my role within HMH and ultimately a solid career in accessibility. Let’s not skim over the fact that I do love a good exam too, ha!

You might have already noticed that there’s not a huge amount of information or opinion pieces out there about the WAS being a relatively niche specialisation (and I’ve shared the ones I’ve found at the end of this article), so I hope that by sharing my experiences, it will help somebody else along the way to get a better understanding of the process, some tips for preparation, and feel more confident in attempting the exam.

* “WAS pass rate is 58–60%. But there is a caveat to this. 34–40% of the people that apply for WAS do not have the required experience — time in work and or experience with 10 out of the 13 topics, but are convinced that they can study and learn it.”

— Samantha Evans (IAAP)

What is the WAS?

The Web Accessibility Specialist is a technical-level credential and is

“intended for accessibility professionals who are expected to evaluate the accessibility of existing content or objects according to published technical standards and guidelines, and provide detailed remediation recommendations.”

The exam itself lasts 2 hours, and consists of 75 multiple choice questions divided into the following categories:

1. Creating Accessible Web Solutions (40% of the exam)
2. Identify accessibility issues in web solutions (40% of the exam)
3. Remediating issues in web solutions (20% of the exam)

Who is the IAAP WAS exam for?

From the IAAP FAQ;

“The WAS is the ideal credential for intermediate (3–5 years’ experience) professionals who function in one of many team roles related to accessible web solutions. The WAS is ideal for people who design, develop, implement, evaluate, or manage accessible web-based content, projects, and services. The WAS is not focused on writing code, but rather the ability to recognize and identify issues in programmatic content, ability to explain what is missing or incorrect, understand usability and testing practices, along with contextual understanding of the impact on the end-user. This exam is not intended for beginners or those without regular hands-on experience or exposure to these elements of web accessibility.

Knowledge of HTML programming alone will not provide the background necessary to successfully achieve the WAS credential. Hands-on experience and knowledge of programmatic code elements, WCAG 2.1 standards, and contextual implications for end users of assistive technology are all required. Please ensure that your experience matches these requirements before registering for this exam.”

Additionally, there is a recommendation that you have personal, hands-on experience in at least 10 of the following 13 topics as taken directly from the IAAP site:

1. HTML code. This does not mean writing HTML code.
2. JavaScript. This does not mean writing JavaScript code.
3. Usability testing in iOS environments.
4. Usability testing in Android environments
5. Usability testing in Windows environments.
6. Usability testing with multiple forms of assistive technology.
7. Browser specific assistive technologies.
8. ARIA.
9. ATAG.
10. Understanding of WCAG 2.1 Standards.
11. Understanding of accessibility best practices.
12. Web accessibility auditing and remediation.
13. Understanding the end-user impacts of web accessibility.

Photo by Craig Melville on Unsplash

What is my own Background and Experience in Accessibility?

While I have a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Software Engineering from NUI Maynooth, my varied career history up until recently has largely involved test, quality engineering, localisation engineering, process management and vendor management.

Accessibility knocked on my door in 2017 while working at HMH and it quickly became evident that we had a knowledge and skills gap within the organisation. After having spent some time researching, learning and working with my team on the delivery of an accessible feature for our Ed platform, it became clear that the work required aligned really well with my strengths and skillset (in addition to being fascinatingly interesting to me) - so I grabbed the opportunity with both hands and dove in head first, expanding both my knowledge and my reach across the organisation since. Since 2019, my role has been entirely focused on driving and supporting accessible design, development, test and process within HMH — and I haven’t looked back. This breadth of experience, working with different departments, applications and with varying levels of expertise has definitely given me an advantage when considering the WAS syllabus.

Me, diving into a career in accessibility. P.S That’s not actually me. Photo by Karim Aazzouzi on Unsplash

How did I prepare?

Preparation for WAS was lengthy and multi-faceted:

1. My job: Every day at HMH, I test, review, validate, teach, research and learn about accessibility, from both a user perspective, and a technical one. As mentioned above, I’m fortunate to have had involvement in multiple aspects of accessible design, development and test within my organisation so this most definitely gave me a head start.
2. IAAP CPACC certification: If accessibility certification is your thing, I would strongly advise tackling the more approachable CPACC before WAS. This broader course was a great introduction to accessibility theory and helps prepare you for the distinctive IAAP exam ‘style’ too. There is a large amount of overlap so the majority of what you learn for CPACC will prove to be very relevant for WAS.
3. Deque WAS Preparation Course: This lengthy course (approx. 20 hours of reading) is a highly recommended resource to base your revision on. I’m a big fan of Deque’s accessible site and their clear wording, but also wish there was better alignment between the content layout and Book of Knowledge. While the content was not complete (you still need to reference official W3C standards and WAI-ARIA technical documentation), it provided a solid basis for covering the Body of Knowledge outline (see point 4). Side Note: The Deque course (and many other WAS preparation courses) all count towards your Continuing Accessibility Education Credits (CAECs) if you previously passed and are planning to renew the CPACC certification.
4. IAAP WAS Body of Knowledge: This syllabus outline combined with the Deque preparation course was where I spent 75% of my study time.
5. Amy Carney’s 100 Days of A11y blog: I read every single one of Amy’s blog posts, from 1–100 over the course of my preparation. These refreshing articles were a great diversion from the more technical documentation and I often migrated to Amy’s blog on those tired, late evenings. Thanks a million Amy for a brilliant resource and constant reminder of why we do what we do.
6. A11y Princeton Meet Up: I attended a series of 3 ‘Deque Course Quiz Review’ calls to review the Deque WAS sample questions with the A11y Princeton group. These calls were fantastic and formed a great basis for discussion. I really valued hearing diverse perspectives on accessibility across different industries, in addition to those exam tips. Thank you John Jameson for hosting these valuable sessions.
7. Self-directed Study: While my manager was incredibly supportive of my finding time to study, fitting all I needed to during my working day in addition to … well … work, was just not feasible. I committed to studying 10–12 hours per week in my personal time, over evenings and weekends, between August and December 2021. This was in addition to having completed a run through of the Deque preparation course earlier in 2021.

Phew. If this seems like a massive undertaking, it was. Did I over prepare? In hindsight, yes I did. However, it’s impossible to know what depth of preparation is required particularly for the more ‘open ended’ exam topics — and that’s frustrating. How deep down that rabbit hole of research are you expected to go? How many hours should you pour over the WAI-ARIA technical specification before you can consider yourself ‘familiar’ with it? It’s tricky. For an exam that only has a recent addition of 8 sample questions, forking out nearly €600 and sitting the WAS will continue to be an expensive gamble for many.

My 6 year old son presented this ‘Good Luck’ card to me on the morning of my exam where he hoped I would ‘win the cirtificet [sic]’. Was he dropping a hint about too much time on my laptop, perhaps? #ParentingFail

My Recommendations for Future Test-Takers

1. If you don’t already have the CPACC certification, consider taking this one first. In fact, many people do both together and it may make sense for you to cover both syllabuses sequentially (I didn’t have the confidence to write ‘syllabi’ there as it sounds odd). Either way, review the CPACC content first. Deque offer a discounted package for both courses together so this is worth considering.
2. Don’t underestimate how preparation for WAS will take over your life. Ensure you have the right level of experience as required by IAAP before you sign up for the exam — it ain’t cheap and it ain’t easy.
3. Register for the Deque Preparation course and read the content start to finish before you commit to sitting the exam. This alone may take you a number of months, and it can help to review and absorb this content in your own time before putting yourself under time pressure with an exam date. It will also give you a good indication of what areas you need to focus on and where you are more comfortable. Once you have completed this, then ensure to use the Body of Knowledge as the basis for your study, reaching out to the relevant resources to cover each topic adequately.
4. Find a study-buddy or a Meet Up group (similar to A11y Princeton) who can help you stay focused, accountable and provide you with different perspectives on the content and syllabus. It also adds a really nice, personal dimension to your study (that doesn’t involve burying your head in a book) and that shouldn’t be underestimated.
5. Take advantage of all those wonderful resources out there on the web — the following are the contents of my ‘WAS Prep’ browser bookmarks that I referred to regularly in addition to the official W3C resources — you might also find some of these useful:

• IAAP Prepare for WAS
• WebAim — Invisible Content
• TeachAccess Tutorial
• Kitty Giraudel — Hiding Content Responsibly
• W3.org Tutorials
• WebAim — Designing for Screen Reader Compatibility
• Kat Shaw — What the Heck is ARIA? A Beginner’s Guide to ARIA for Accessibility
• W3.org — Before and After Demonstration
• RussMaxDesign HTML Test Cases
• WebAIM Accessible JavaScript
• Dhark.com Learning A11y
• Gary Byrne — Introduction to ARIA Live Regions
• A11yPortal.com
• Amy Carney — 100 Days of A11y

My Feedback for IAAP

• The syllabus outlined in the WAS Body of Knowledge is enormous and open ended. While this knowledge is all extremely valuable for accessibility professionals, in many ways the syllabus feels too broad for a 75 question exam, sacrificing real depth of knowledge for a higher quantity of topics. If this is truly a technical exam, then I would argue that topics in the ‘softer’ areas of accessibility could have been cut and potentially moved to the CPACC syllabus which is orders of magnitude smaller than WAS.
• Is it really necessary to require exam takers to memorise screen reader shortcuts for up to 6 screen readers? I found this a frustrating and frankly unnecessary element of the syllabus. At least 2 of the 75 questions quizzed me on these shortcuts — all of which can be found in the screen readers’ own help files, if required. This felt like an unfair exercise in memorisation rather than one that tested my real understanding of screen reader theory and operation. If anyone has contradictory opinions or different perspectives on this aspect of WAS, please share as I’d be genuinely interested to hear them.
• Please, please, please have all questions reviewed for grammar and spelling. In the bank of 75 questions presented to me, at least 3 contained obvious spelling or grammatical errors. For an exam that cost nearly €600 to sit, and one which is advertised as accessible itself, it’s not good enough.
• Some of the questions were too vague or missed important information — how can you confidently answer an incomplete question? In many cases, my answer was ‘it depends’ (and naturally that wasn’t an answer option!). Making an educated guess in the real world while lacking all the necessary information is one thing, but it’s another to expect this on a technical exam.

My Concluding Thoughts

To answer my original question, is the WAS a worthwhile offering or a missed opportunity? Well, my answer is ‘a bit of both’.

As I immerse myself in accessibility as a career, and focus on learning and personal development, WAS was the perfect ‘next step’ for me. Despite the long hours studying and the huge syllabus, the content always interested me. I inhaled the information, and it’s all so relevant to everything I do. If anything, this process has just further confirmed for me that I’m on the right path and accessibility is, without a doubt providing an exciting and fulfilling career for me. There are endless opportunities to learn and to improve how we support all our teachers and students at HMH in addition to contributing to a more inclusive web; and having proudly achieved this certification, I feel more confident in my skillset and better equipped to do more.

Regarding the exam itself, I believe the WAS needs to continue to evolve to better meet the needs of the industry, and to meet the expectations of the ‘technical, intermediate’ accessibility professional. A stronger focus on identifying code issues, along with more in-depth analysis of technical specifications and standards would in my opinion, be more valuable than other, more vague or distracting topics on the syllabus (ahem, screen reader shortcut keys). I also think a review of the questions is strongly warranted — the quality and difficulty varied massively from ‘this question is really obvious’ to ‘I don’t have enough information here’ to ‘wow, this grammatical error is really distracting’. Interestingly, I felt a similar frustration after sitting the CPACC.

That said, the IAAP have confidently led the charge here in accessibility certification and have proven to be evolving and adapting as industry standards and technologies change. It’s also very promising to see accessibility and software engineer job specifications listing the IAAP certifications as a ‘nice to have’, further adding weight and value to their offering.

Whatever your feelings on certification in general, there’s no doubt that WAS is an extremely worthwhile and comprehensive syllabus to explore— and even if you pass or fail the exam, get lost down those ARIA rabbit holes or get a bit frustrated along the way, it would be difficult to argue that the journey hasn’t been worth it.

Special thanks to HMH for financing the WAS exam, Darragh Grace, Amy Carney, Samantha Evans (IAAP), John Jameson (Princeton) and all the other contributors to accessibility who make our digital world a better place.

Further Reading and Personal Accounts of WAS Certification:

Becoming a Certified Web Accessibility Specialist

Accessibility Pro Certified: To Be or Not To Be - 24 Accessibility

Certified Web Accessibility Specialist

Fancy a change? We need passionate, motivated, accessibility-aware people like you to come join us at HMH!