I've been a certified professional in accessibility core competencies since 2023.
The exam was 100 multiple choice questions. I spent about two months grinding through the material to feel ready for it. It wasn't easy. There's a lot of ground to cover. Standards, best practices, compliance frameworks, the works. But I passed and I got that piece of paper that says I know stuff.
But here's the thing.
None of that matters if you don't actually care about people. And I mean really care. Not in a surface-level, check-the-box kind of way.
Because accessibility isn't about following the WCAG and passing audits. You have to make people feel heard. You have to relate and understand that their experience matters.
And that only takes a few minutes to do. A few minutes to listen, to validate and to show someone you get it.
This reassurance costs nothing. No exam prep, no study groups, no continuing education credits required.
Compassion doesn't expire either. You don't have to renew your empathy license every three years.
But here's where I messed up early on. And I see a lot of people do this.
You can spend months preparing, studying hard and passing exams. You can know every standard backwards and forwards. But if you don't spend those few minutes actually talking to people, you've wasted all that time. Seriously. The knowledge becomes just noise if there's no human connection behind it.
The certification got me in the door. But the people part is what actually makes me want to be better at this.