Last week I was an awarded a scholarship to complete coursework from Deque University (opens in a new tab). Not only do they have their own certification, but they also have prep for the official IAAP (opens in a new tab) certification exams. I have a year to complete all available coursework.
I just stumbled upon this last week, and I think that attaining these certs would give me a huge advantage in my career. It seems that accessibility experts are in high-demand, and I'll also gain knowledge in compliance with mobile devices and different kinds of documents (Word, PDF, etc).
I've been using the Deque Devtools Extension (opens in a new tab) heavily for this site rebuild. I've also been using the WAVE Extension (opens in a new tab) and Lighthouse (opens in a new tab), but I prefer the Deque extension because of how granular the audits are. I'm using the free trial of the Pro version, and I definitely see its value and want to get a subscription soon.
My plan is to create and export audit reports for every page on this site so they can be viewed by users. I'm striving for WCAG 2.2 AAA compliance. This was tricky because of the strict rules, but I was able to meet the guidelines without sacrificing this design that I'm so proud of.
I'm hoping to become IAAP-certified by the end of next year. I'm really excited! Thank you to Deque for the scholarship!