Prepare for the CPACC (or any) Exam — Strategies for Learning Success

13 min readAug 16, 2023

While I prepared dinner, my dogs Ricky (pictured) and Sadie, listened to my recorded voice while I read the “Body of Knowledge” book and other CPACC-exam related resources.

Update

I passed the CPACC exam. Woot! So I guess these study tactics were successful after all. Keep reading….

TL;DR

Taking the CPACC exam is no picnic. I am sharing the strategies I used to study for this challenging exam.

Granted, this plan may not work for everyone. Consider how you effectively learn, as you read through these suggestions, and choose what might work best for you.

And we’re off

Whew! I did it…. I took the CPACC exam.

Did I pass? I am not sure. I won’t find out a definitive answer for a few weeks.

Until then I can share my studying strategies to help you prepare for this challenging exam.

The funny thing about the CPACC exam material is, I first thought, “Oh, this stuff is so simple. It’s just common sense, right?” Nope! After I started to take the online courses, and bomb the practice quizzes, I knew this was not going to be so simple. If I wanted to pass the CPACC exam, I needed to come up with a serious learning strategy to be successful.

What is the CPACC?

According to the IAAP website, which is the organization that distributes the exam, the CPACC exam is: The IAAP Certified Professional in Accessibility Core Competencies (CPACC) credential is IAAP’s foundational professional certification. Relevant domains for the CPACC credential include the web and other digital technologies, architecture and the built environment, consumer and industrial design, transportation systems, and any domain in which thoughtful design, policy, and management can improve disability access.

In other words, it’s a certification to signify that IT professionals know the ins and outs of accessibility core concepts. People who are CPACC certified are considered leaders in the field of disability and accessibility theory. They guide their teams to develop more accessible digital products and services, and even physical environments.

What’s the exam like?

100 multiple-choice questions — with four (4) possible responses
Taken in 2 hours — which flies by quickly
Closed book — which means you cannot reference any material — you have to know this stuff
Challenging — I will say that I did feel like I knew most of the answers — maybe just not 100% confident about all of them.

To study for the CPACC exam, I used paper flashcards to help me remember the concepts I had the most trouble absorbing. As I learned a concept, it removed the card from the flashcard pile, making it smaller and smaller. Look how thick this pile of flashcards is.]

How did I prepare?

I am not the kind of person who can crack a book the night before a major exam, skim the pages, absorb all the knowledge and ace the test. I wish! Nope, I have always had to work for my decent grades.

I am kind of old school. I am a physical, not digital, book reader. I like to highlight printed paper and review my highlights over and over. But I do not have a printer, and I want to save the trees a bit, so I opted out on printing the material for a paperless experience.

Since my go-to methodology of study was off the table, it took to a few new (to me) methods to prepare for this exam:

Online courses
Recordings of chapters and charts
Highlighted digital PDF
Physical flashcards
Activities on a digital whiteboard Mural
Practice quizzes
Digital flashcards
Typed notes
Create songs

Now let me talk about how I tackled my “mixed-methods” approach to learning.

Online courses

There are a few highly recommended online courses to help you prepare for the exam. I was lucky enough that my employer had budget for me to take these courses to help me prepare for the CPACC exam. Basically, these online courses consist of a lot of written material, reworded from the “Body of Knowledge,” which is considered the CPACC exam source of truth. So, these online courses are a lot of reading, with some videos, to help reinforce or illustrate the concepts in different ways. The Deque course and the official IAAP course are not free, but both courses are very extensive when it comes to covering the material.

Would I recommend one over the other? Probably not. They are pretty similar in the material covered. And it’s tough for me to determine which source was the better one, since I do not know my result from the exam yet. Ha! My approach was to read these online courses, and take my own notes copy/pasted in MS Word. More on reviewing these typed notes below.

Recordings of chapters and charts

I hate the sound of my own recorded voice, don’t you? But my co-worker suggested that I record myself while reading the online courses to listen to the material audibly when I am away from my desk. I could listen while cooking, cleaning, walking the dogs, taking a break or just any other time I had a few free moments. I found this to be helpful because it gave me the opportunity to hear the information (and therefore internalize it) from a different sense other than reading.

I will admit, my mind tends to wonder while I am cooking or walking the dogs, so at times it was challenging to stay focused on the audio recordings. But listening to the information over and over, helped me to pick up pieces here and there that I might have tuned out the previous time I listened. For the charts, like the Universal Design for Learning Principals, I am not sure if listening through my ears, or viewing it with my eyes was a better approach. But again, taking every opportunity to internalize the information was the goal here.

Pro tip: Break up the content into smaller chucks. I would recommend making the recordings from 5 to 20 minutes, so that you can listen to them during shorter activities. I had some recordings that were longer, upwards of 50 minutes, and I found those to be too long to keep focus on. Making them shorter gives you more opportunities to listen to them when you only have a few minutes of free time.

Highlighted digital PDF

Like I said, I am old school, and I like to highlight textbooks. For me the opportunity to highlight the “Body of Knowledge” PDF was a good way for me to approach the learning the way I was comfortable with — highlight key concepts to review again later. Using Adobe Acrobat, I was able to highlight the key phrases in the PDF. Then I later read the PDF and audio recorded highlighted text for my “away from computer” activities. I also would review the highlighted portion when I felt like my eyes needed to see something other than the online courses or MS Word notes I was reviewing. Changing things up was key for me.

Physical flashcards

Flashcards are old school, but they can be a great “reality check” method to see if you are really absorbing the material. Sometimes, I fool myself thinking I am reading something and taking it all in. But I know my mind can wonder while reading too. So, to check that I am getting the material, I would take the practice quizzes and do the activities in Mural (see below). I pulled content for my flashcards from failed quizzes, my activities in Mural and other sources that just didn’t seem to be sinking into my brain. I just used stable card stock paper. One side had the topic, the other side had the definition, principle or statistic I was trying to remember. Physical flash cards were particularly helpful for me to learn:

Laws
Disability numbers and statistics
Components or principles
Definitions

Writing these cards by hand, and having them physically in my hands helped me to make a stronger connection with the material. I believe it helped me to learn it faster. The benefit of physical flashcards is that you can quiz yourself from both sides of the cards. For example:

Side 1: What percent of the world has a disability?
Side 2: 15%

Now you can quiz yourself from side 2 (15%) or side 1 (What percent of the world has a disability?). Flip it back and forth to quiz your knowledge from both ways.

Pro tip: In your learning rounds, eliminate cards from the stack as you get them correct. This helps you feel like you are making progress in learning, and it forces you to revisit the information you are having the most struggles learning. Get the answer right, remove it from the stack. Get it wrong, it goes back into the stack until you finally learn it.

I used the digital whiteboard Mural (though any tool will do) to help me build the concepts under the key principals. First, I structured the stickies correctly under each principle.

Then I scrambled the stickies up all up (I love Mural’s “Grid” feature) so that I could then move them under the correct header. This really helped push my knowledge and make sure I was really understanding the content.

Activities on a digital whiteboard Mural

Even though Mural was my tool of choice, you could use any virtual whiteboard or digital design tool to help “quiz” yourself on the material. Again, this was another means for me to move beyond reading, audio and quizzes. Working in a digital whiteboard forced me to apply the components to the principle.

Let me explain the steps of how I did this in Mural through an example:

Determine what topics you need extra help remembering
Black header for the name of the principle (use any colors you choose)
Orange for the definition
Yellow for the components of the principle
Blue for examples from quizzes and courses
Construct hierarchies so you have the correct answers to reference
Make a copy of that to work with and “scramble”
Use the Grid feature in Mural to mix up all the stickies (all except the principle headers)
Once the stickies are mixed, try to apply them to the right principle
The topics you get wrong, make a note to try to learn from your mistakes
Repeat the activity until you perfectly assign topics to principles

The advantage of using a virtual whiteboard is the ample amount of space to work in. You can use several different approaches to help you structure material to help you learn. Stick a visual example or a graphic next to the content to help make visual connections for memory. You can use a variety or formats, illustrations, photos, text, drawing lines, creating timelines and charts. Use different colors, structural and visual approaches to bring out the knowledge in visual ways.

Pro tip: For my Mural, I had categories for Universal Design, Universal Design for Learning and POUR (Perceivable, Operable, Understanding and Robust). But do this for whatever information you might need extra help remembering.

In Mural, I also restructured the laws around themes (civil rights, disability, anti-discrimination, and ICT (information and communication technology) to help me decipher the laws in a different way. A gal like me just can’t help affinitizing on a whiteboard.

Practice quizzes

Quizzes were a hard-core reality check for me. Just when I thought I had read the chapter, absorbed most of it, and really was learning…. Boom! Quizzes acted like a slap in the face that I was not focusing on the material strong enough. Ouch! In the past I would often skip the quizzes thinking, “Yeah I know this stuff. I don’t need to take the quiz.” Boy, was I wrong.

The quizzes from the online courses were helpful in a number of ways:

Tested my comprehension of the material
Showed the gaps in my knowledge
Illustrated the types of questions
Showed me how tricky the questions could be

Pro tip: I would not say that the quiz questions from the online courses are the exact questions on the exam. So don’t feel compelled to memorize the quiz questions from the courses, thinking they are going to be the same ones on the exam. What I would suggest is to make sure you know the answers for these online quizzes, just in case similar topics appear on the exam.

Digital flashcards

Like I mentioned before, I used physical flashcards to help me personalize the material that I needed extra time to learn. But I also found a great online resource, Quizlet, where people had created flash cards to help them prepare for the CPACC exam. This was yet another reality check to see if I was absorbing the information.

Typed notes

I sure do love me some typed notes. It’s easy to copy and paste isn’t it? Maybe sometimes too easy.

I had two sources for typed notes that I used to prepare for the CPACC
My own notes I copied and pasted from online courses
My co-worker Meg Wyble’s fantastic notes she took from online courses

Even though our resources were quite similar, (we were both pulling from the same IAAP and Deque sources) we took quite different approaches. Meg had a separate document for each chapter from the Deque course. I had one long MS Word document (over 80 pages) from the same course.

I found that Meg’s approach, having the content in smaller consumable chunks was much better. In fact, I didn’t even go back and read my notes after taking them because I thought the document was too long and overwhelming. Determine if copy/paste notes from an online source to your own notes is really worth it.

Create songs

I know, it is a silly concept. An adult singing songs to help remember the material? Well let me tell you, it worked. This is known as a mnemonic device, which is a learning technique that helps with information retention and remembering. This technique was also inspired by sage advice from my co-worker Jami Odell. I was listening to one of his recordings, and suddenly he was singing the Universal Design Principles to the “A-Team” TV show theme. What??? This catchy tune helped me to remember the principles as well. I know you might feel a bit silly making up songs to remember things, but it is effective. Try it the next time you really need to learn something.

Ricky and Sadie enjoyed morning walks while I listened to audio recordings of myself (suggested by my co-worker Jami Odell). I read passages from the online courses and graphics of key principles and concepts to help the information go in my brain from multiple senses.

Are there any ‘Cliffs Notes’ or ‘short cut’ version to reduce study time?

You wish! If you know of any, please share. But I feel like the level of details the tests asks would not be enough for a “short cut” version. You really need to know the details, and more importantly, how they apply to the concepts to real-world examples.

Format of the questions

Let’s talk about how the practice quizzes “showed me how tricky the questions can be” for a second. When I say tricky, I just mean you REALLY need to focus on what the question is asking you. For the most part, questions are not so much asking you to select the best definition of a term. That would be too easy. Instead, the questions require you to take your knowledge to the next level. Not only do you need to know the definition or principle, but you also need to APPLY that to the BEST example or concept. That is the challenging part. Here is an example of what I mean by a “tricky” question.

Question: Which is the best way to eat your way to good nutrition?

A. Include an array of colors to your plate

B. Eat a variety of fruits and vegetables

C. Eat a large amount of high-protein foods like seafood, poultry, red meats, heathy fats, eggs and legumes

D. Drink wine since it is lower in calories than beer

The correct answer is B.

First, you need to understand what good “nutrition means,” and what types of food might contribute to “good nutrition.” Then you need to think about which truly is the BEST answer.

Answer A sounds good, but this is too generic. Do you know what “colorful foods should be eaten” even means? Skittles are pretty colorful, does that mean you fill your plate with this colorful candy? Nope!

Answer C is wrong because you should not eat a large amount of protein. Plus, it is not recommended to eat a LARGE amount of red meat and healthy fats. Note, pay attention to key words that make the answer less than BEST.

Answer D is wrong because alcohol consumption is not considered a positive contributor to good nutrition.

Could some of these answers up for debate? Probably. But the idea here is to select the BEST answer. That does not mean that all the other answers are completely wrong. They might not be the best answer. The key here is to pay attention to every word. One small detail can significantly change the question or answer. So read every question and option very carefully.

How long did all of this take?

I am not going to lie, this is definitely a time commitment and professional investment. I really can’t estimate how long it took me to prepare. And the amount of time a person needs is going to greatly vary. I started reviewing the material several months ago, but found it was not really sinking in.

The best strategy for me was to put a deadline in place and work from there. I decided I was going to take the exam in approximately 3 months. Then I started reading the “Body of Knowledge,” taking all the online courses, and reviewing Meg’s MS Word notes. But I was starting to worry that if I read it too far in advance, I would start to forget the material. Remember I am also balancing working full time and other extra curricular activities.

So I put a line in the sand: 1 month from today. I picked an exam date and booked it. There was no turning back. At that point, I was committing 1–4 hours a day to really learning the material, and using the mixed-method approach I just discussed. Again, that is my time estimate, you have to know how quickly you learn, how easily you forget and how much time you have to commit to learning.

Now what?

Hurry up and wait. Exam grading takes 4–6 weeks after the close of the exam session. My exam session was from July 19 to August 16. I took the exam on August 3rd.

I will say, it takes a village to help a person through challenges like the CPACC exam. It is a beast. I had some great notes and tips from co-workers who had already passed the exam. I had such fantastic moral support when I felt like I was “dumb as a box of hair,” certainly destined to fail. It was my village that reminded me that “I’ve got this” and helped me reach the finish line.

For me, that victory lap (whether I passed the exam or not) was a yummy banh mi sandwich.