My CPACC test experience
Hello! This article is for people who are preparing for the CPACC certification test, or those who are just curious about it and considering taking it. I recently received news that I passed the test, and I wanted to share some of my insights from my own experience with the process.
Some background
I took the CPACC certification test on December 2, 2024. I registered for the test on the advice of a colleague who's a Digital Inclusion specialist; she recommended I take the test when I expressed my interest in getting serious about accessibility consulting as a career.
I've spent most of my career in digital media in the advertising industry, specifically regarding design and technology, and specifically in the healthcare sector. I'd been consulting on accessibility as a part of my job for the last four years; mostly reviewing designs for websites/emails/banner ads/etc and flagging ADA/WCAG issues. Before this, I had no formal training in accessibility. I would say that conversations about accessibility accounted for maybe 25% of my work day, most days, in recent years; certainly not a majority of my time. However, it's become the part of my work that I enjoy most, and so I'd been considering a switch to doing accessibility consulting full-time for a while.
Preparing for the test
I read the IAAP website and saw that a testing cycle for CPACC was coming up soon. I applied ($25 fee), got approved a couple days later, then I registered for the test ($460), and then I was able to select the date of my test. I downloaded the IAAP CPACC Body of Knowledge and began reading.
I prepared for the CPACC test for only about two weeks before taking it. I first read the Body of Knowledge about three times and took lots of notes, and then I read on Reddit that the Deque University training was very good, so I signed up for that as well (~$60). I do think the Deque U training was totally worthwhile. A lot of it reads like a repeat of the Body of Knowledge, but that actually helped me identify which things that I'd already read about were the most important, and it gives some more detail and context. I went through the Deque U training maybe three times, and I took all of quizzes repeatedly until I could get them 100% correct with no mistakes. A lot of the quizzes are extremely easy if you've read the materials. A few of them had one or two tricky questions.
In both the Body of Knowledge and in the Deque U training, I found the section on disabilities and the section on accessibility and universal design to be relatively clear; much easier to digest (for me) than the section on accessibility law. That was the area I was most worried about for the test, as my career has really only had me focus on the ADA. The material about the various laws is pretty dense, but luckily it only makes up 20% of the test.
In both the Body of Knowledge and Deque U, for some reason I found the chapter on universal design for learning to be really hard to digest. (Unlike universal design, which felt easy for me.) So many terms and guidelines! I did the best I could. I took tons of notes and even made myself write the same things down X number of times to try to memorize them. After a while I could feel it all starting to sink in.
The Deque U training had a related 50-question quiz afterward — "Fast Track to Accessibility for Non-Technical Roles" — which I took. I got a 94% the first time, and then I took it again immediately and got 100%. I would say this quiz is much easier than the actual CPACC test, but it was good practice.
Taking the certification test
In taking the actual CPACC test, out of 100 questions, I would guess that I got anywhere from 5-10 wrong. Possibly 15? Of course I could be way off; maybe I got 20 wrong, or even more. The IAAP website does not tell you how many questions you can get wrong and still pass. However, my general feeling in leaving the testing facility was that I had done well.
There were several questions where, let's say, two answers were obviously wrong, and then out of the remaining two, I felt just a little stronger about one or the other. So the odds are I would've gotten at least some of those questions right, even though I didn't definitely know the answer. I'd say for at least 80 of the questions I felt very confident that I knew the answer — of course I could be wrong about that for any of them.Like I've seen a lot of people say, I found the questions about specific accessibility laws to be the hardest. And I really did spend a lot of time reading that section over and over again in both the Body of Knowledge and in the Deque U training, and taking copious notes. It all just never felt like it was sinking in as well as I wanted.
I felt like there were a few questions regarding accessibility laws that were worded pretty vaguely; this was frustrating. There were a few where I felt like I could eliminate one answer pretty easily, and the remaining three all sounded vaguely the same. In a couple cases I just had to randomly guess.
I completed the 100 questions in about 45 minutes (out of the two-hour time limit), and then I made myself slowly read through all 100 again. This led me to change just one or two of my answers. In the end my total test time was about an hour and twenty minutes.
Two hours for 100 questions might sound short — just 72 seconds per question — but you'll see some of them are extremely easy and quick to answer. Two hours really is plenty of time, if you're comfortable with English. I thought several times about how hard this would be for me to do in my second language (French) and I definitely feel sympathy for anyone who's taking this kind of certification in a language that's not native to them.
Practical things about how the test is formatted
I took the test in-person at a big testing facility, I should mention. As everyone else checked in I got to hear what tests they were taking, and there was no one else for CPACC; just me. The whole experience in the testing facility was clear and efficient.
When they finally placed me at a computer in the testing room, the test began with several screens of instructions, which did not count against the two-hour time limit for the test.
In these instructions you learn that you can flag any questions for review later; this feature was very useful to me. I flagged any question where I didn't feel... let's say 90% sure of my answer. I probably flagged about 10-15 questions along the way.
You also learn that you can highlight anything in the test, and you can strike through anything in the test — that is, any words in the questions and/or in the answers. I didn't think I would use these features, but ultimately I did, specifically the strike-through feature. For the hardest questions, there were usually one or two answers that were obviously wrong, and it turned out it was actually very helpful for me to be able to strike through the obviously wrong ones so I could focus my eyes/brain more easily on reading the potential correct answers over and over again until I could make a decision.
I tried highlighting a few things just to try out that functionality, but I didn't find it useful to me.
When you complete the last question, that doesn't submit the test. You can go back and view the list of all 100 questions, see which ones you've flagged for review, and see which ones you haven't answered, if any. From there you can jump to specific questions you've flagged and change your answer if you wish. You can go back to the question list as many times as you want, review all questions as many times as you want, and change your answers as many times as you want — within the allotted time limit, of course — before submitting the test.
Of course, you should be prepared for any of these things to be different if you take the CPACC test. I imagine they tweak some things from time to time, possibly as often as each testing cycle.
When I was finally ready, I submitted the test and got a confirmation screen telling me I'd receive my results in four to six weeks. Grrr! I knew this would be the case, but it was a long and painful wait. I ended up waiting just over five weeks to receive my results.
One last thing: of course you can't bring any study materials into the test, but they did give me a small whiteboard pad to jot notes on. They told me not to erase anything, which sort of creeped me out and made me not want to take any notes at all. So I didn't. I imagine they scan all of these and use them to learn about which things people found difficult.
Note on email notifications
One frustrating thing throughout this whole process was that, for some reason, I did not receive most of the relevant email notifications — e.g. a notification that my application fee was received, or a notification that my application had been approved and I could move forward with choosing a date for the test.
Early in the process I noticed that I wasn't receiving the expected emails — and I checked spam, of course! many times! — and ultimately I contacted the IAAP through their website. Someone got back to me, they tried to resend an email to see if I'd receive it, and I did not, and I let them know — and then the person basically disappeared and didn't answer any further communications from me. (Or maybe they tried, and I failed to receive those emails as well.) That was very frustrating.
So, throughout the process, the only way I could learn the status of anything was to log in to the site frequently and poke around in my account. This worked, but was a bit nerve-wracking; what if I missed something important?
I've never had this kind of issue with emails coming from any other website or organization, so I have no idea what the problem could've been. I mention all of this just in case anyone else happens to have the same issue.
(Fortunately, I did receive emails from the testing facility; that was a relief.)
After taking the test, I was very worried I would never receive any news about whether or not I passed, and so about four weeks after my test date I began logging in to my account every day to look for updates. The status remained as "In progress" for about a week, and then finally one day it changed to "Passed"! I went and searched for myself in the Certified Professional Directory, just in case; it's neat to find myself in there.
Interestingly, I did receive an email notification that I'd passed, about five hours after I found my results on the IAAP site.
About a week after that, I received an email from a third-party organization that handles various certifications, which contained a link to download my badge showing that I'm CPACC certified. This was annoying, as you have to create an account with this third party in order to download your badge — which, by the way, is also displayed right in the email (at 1200x1200 pixels if you download the image, nice and high-res). So there's really no need to sign up; there's nothing further of interest on that site. Although, if you don't register, like I didn't initially, they send annoying reminders that you haven't downloaded your badge. So ultimately I just gave in.
Overall, other than this email issue, I found the whole experience around applying for and taking the test fairly clear and well-organized. I highly recommend it to anyone who's interested in accessibility as a career!
– Manning
Questions/comments? Feel free to contact me at manning@manningkrull.com. I update these articles pretty frequently — best practices evolve over time as the world of digital quickly changes, and I always welcome insights from others.