My Journey to the International Association of Accessibility Professionals (IAAP) Web Accessibility Specialist (WAS) Certification

Join me on my journey as I prepare for the IAAP Web Accessibility Specialist (WAS) certification, sharing weekly insights, resources, and study plans.

Published on: 2025-01-29

Written by Schalk Neethling

The title is a mouthful for sure, but this is what will be occupying a lot of my downtime over the next ten weeks or so. There is a lot to work through in preparation for the exam, but thankfully I have been doing this for quite some time now, so I will primarily be solidifying my knowledge and understanding of the various aspects of web accessibility. With that said, this is a rather large topic and I am sure I will learn a lot of new things along the way, especially after having reviewed, what is called, the IAAP Book of Knowledge (BoK) for the WAS certification.

I will be writing the exam during the first or second week in April 2025 and am both excited and scared shitless. I have been working in the web accessibility space for a number of years now, but I have never written a certification exam to in a sense “prove” that I know what I am talking about, so this is a first for me. More importantly, that old friend imposter syndrome is rearing its ugly head again, so this is going to be a fun ride for sure.

In order to make this a less solitary experience I though that keeping some form of a weekly journal here on the blog might be a good idea. I will be sharing my thoughts, experiences, and learnings and will also be sharing some of the resources I have found useful along the way, so if you are also considering writing the exam, you might find some of the resources I share useful. I am also using old ChatGPT to help me formulate a weekly study plan, so I will be sharing that as well and let you know if I needed to make any tweaks to the plan as I go along.

To start, here is the planned weekly study schedule:

Week 1: Deep Dive into WCAG 2.2

Day 1: Foundations of WCAG 2.2

Perceivable (Day 2-4)

Day 2: Understanding Perceivable

Day 3: Techniques & Practical Application

Day 4: Review & Hands-on Practice

Operable (Day 5-7)

Day 5: Understanding Operable

Day 6: Techniques & Real-World Application

Day 7: Hands-on Testing & Review


Resources for the Week


Ok, now it is out there and I am on the hook to actually do this. Wish me luck! 🤞 Ideas, suggestions, cautionary tales? Hit me up on Mastodon, BlueSky, or LinkedIn.