The IAAP Web Accessibility Specialist (WAS) certification covers the technical skills needed to evaluate and remediate web content against WCAG. The exam targets practitioners who work directly with code, audit reports, and assistive technology behavior. Topics include WCAG 2.1 success criteria interpretation, ARIA roles and properties, semantic HTML, keyboard interaction patterns, screen reader behavior, and … Read more
A provider that actually reviews scan output will explain which flagged items are real issues, which are noise, and what a human evaluator would catch that the scan missed. A provider that does not review their own output will hand you a PDF that looks like it came straight from a tool, with no annotations, … Read more
An accessibility report tells you almost everything you need to know about the person who wrote it. Before hiring an auditor, request a sample report and read it the way a client would read it. Look at how issues are documented, whether WCAG success criteria are cited correctly, and whether a developer could act on … Read more
Before hiring an accessibility auditor, the most important area to vet is methodology. How the work gets done determines whether your audit report reflects real WCAG conformance or surface-level findings. The right questions surface this quickly. A credible auditor evaluates every page or screen manually against WCAG success criteria, uses assistive technologies during evaluation, and … Read more
Every issue an auditor identifies should map to a specific WCAG success criterion. If it does not, the report is incomplete and the path to conformance becomes guesswork. The way to confirm this is to ask for a sample audit report before signing, then check that each row of findings lists the exact criterion number, … Read more
A senior accessibility professional brings pattern recognition that an entry-level practitioner cannot replicate. They evaluate digital assets against WCAG criteria with confidence, write audit reports that developers act on without back-and-forth, and advise on conformance issues that touch legal, design, and engineering at once. An entry-level practitioner can learn the success criteria and run through … Read more
A qualified accessibility auditor uses a small, deliberate set of tools paired with multiple browsers and assistive technologies. The core stack includes a modern browser like Chrome or Firefox, a screen reader such as NVDA, JAWS, or VoiceOver, browser developer tools, and a few targeted inspection extensions. Auditors do not rely on a single automated … Read more
The claim that SEO and accessibility are deeply connected gets repeated so often it sounds like settled fact. It isn’t. The overlap exists, but it’s narrow, and most of what makes a website accessible has no bearing on search rankings. Conflating the two leads teams to believe an SEO-optimized site is largely accessible, which is … Read more
The digital accessibility industry is growing at roughly 10 to 12 percent annually, with most market research firms placing the global market somewhere between $800 million and $1.2 billion as of 2024, projected to exceed $2 billion by the early 2030s. Growth is driven by three forces: the ADA Title II web rule, the European … Read more
A chief accessibility officer (CAO) leads an organization’s accessibility strategy across digital products, services, and internal processes. The role requires a mix of technical accessibility knowledge, leadership experience, and the ability to align accessibility goals with business priorities. Most people who reach this position have spent years working in accessibility consulting, auditing, remediation, or product … Read more