Trusted Tester Certification

At the tail end of 2023, I achieved a task I’ve spent the last 6ish months slowly working towards – I passed my Trusted Tester final exam.

If you’ve never heard about the Trusted Tester – here’s a quick intro: Trusted Tester is a specific process that can be used to test websites for accessibility. It is more focused on the experience than the mechanics, so you do not need a coding background to test with it. The US government’s Department of Homeland Security provides a specific training program on the Trusted Tester process. It is largely built for government employees but is open to the general public. The program usually takes 3 months and culminates with a final exam that you must pass with at least 90% accuracy, the outcome being a Trusted Tester license. The lessons and exam are totally free and it is all self-paced, the only real caveat I had was the limitation that it was only available on PC computers – no Macs, no mobile. In some ways, this helped me focus; I only have one PC in the house, and it’s in such a sad corner of my house that it really killed any chance at distractions! (It also made it harder for me to crank up the ol’ PC and get cracking some days)

Who should take the trusted tester? Someone who:

Wants to be able to test digital media for accessibility
Has dedicated time to focus on course materials and testing
Has regular access to a PC
Has a low frustration tolerance
Lives anywhere (you do not have to be in the US or a US citizen)
Exists on any spectrum of disability – the course and exam can be accommodated, and the coursework and the DHS Accessibility Helpdesk are incredibly inclusive and helpful.
Has very large blocks of time for the practice test and final exam – mine took anywhere from 2-6 hours each time.

Like a lot of accessibility-focused things, it’s incredibly thorough. Each test parameter correlates with WCAG criteria.

It’s worth noting that the Trusted Tester is usually a version or two behind the WCAG, so when I took the final exam (Trusted Tester Version 5), the WCAG 2.2 had been released but I was only tested using the WCAG 2.0. This isn’t necessarily a negative; it takes large organizations (of which my government certainly is) time to absorb new versions of the WCAG and fully adopt them.

I found the program and the exam really challenging. Most of the information is clear and the answers are obvious, ie. Do any images on this page have text that could have been live text? But some are quite a bit more complicated, especially when sections of a page you are testing have numerous issues simultaneously. To add insult to injury, the test format is just a pile of checkboxes that match up to every item on the page you are testing for each test condition. On some items – let’s say you are testing content that changes on focus that should have a notification telling the user that will happen. Do you mark off the checkbox where the heading is for that section – where the instructions would go, or do you mark off the checkbox where the content is changing – or both? These examples might seem a little simplistic – I obviously can’t go into specifics from a major exam, but it meant that I spent a lot of time staring at parts of a webpage against the test, trying to figure out exactly what to mark out. It would definitely be easier if I could tell the developer, “Hey, if you’re going to give someone new content from receiving focus, you need to tell them that it’s going to happen,” and include a screenshot and any other notes I would need. Admittedly, if we were to free-form this exam, it would take eons for them to grade, but I’m hopeful that the next version (slated to come out in March 2024) will be less cumbersome to test-takers.

As frustrating as the program and test were, I found learning the Trusted Tester process to this strident of a degree incredibly insightful. Learning a different process like this felt like those kinetic sculptures I’ve seen that change their appearance as you walk around them. I learned much more about the nuance of some of the WCAG checklist items and their intended purpose. It filled in many blanks that I didn’t realize I had beforehand. A lot of this has started filtering into future posts, so stay tuned. 🙂

Overall, the Trusted Tester program is a really long and challenging class and exam series. At one point, I just could not get past a certain section, and I angrily left the process for about a month before getting a kind pep talk from a coworker who pointed out that while the course and test are awful, it’s worth it to know the material. So I kept on keeping on.

It helps to know at the beginning that a lot of the process feels like you are only learning how to pass the test, and that’s somewhat true. But once you get to the other side of understanding the process, it does make sense, I promise!

I’m grateful I had a few slow months life-wise to dedicate to it, so I was able to get through the material and focus and learn it. This isn’t something you can half pay attention to and still understand; it takes some real head-scratching and attention to detail!

But hey, we’re email geeks, so if there’s one thing we do well, it’s pay attention to detail!

The final exam was definitely a bit nerve-wracking. Once you get admitted to the final exam, you have ten days to start it. Once you start on the final exam, you have three days to finish it. Within that three-day window, you can submit your answers three times. Every time you submit your answers, whatever test items you pass will be removed from your next test, making attempt two shorter than one and three shorter than the two. I found my first pass took about 2 hours and the second and third about an hour each. You must score over 90% to pass the test, which is a pretty high bar! (It does make sense; you don’t want to test a website or email and only catch 80% of the accessibility failures!!) The test is open book and open note, which is a good thing but definitely means you will spend a lot of the test reading! The practice test that you must also pass with a 90% to move to the final exam has a very similar setup, but you can take it as many times as you want until you pass.

Pro tip: Don’t pass the practice exam on the first go – it’s really helpful to take the practice exam a handful of times so you better understand how to pass the final.

Unlike some other accessibility certifications, you don’t have to do anything to keep your certification active. Passing the test once gains the certification and you don’t have to do anything else after that. (My CPACC requires that I do active and measurable work in accessibility and I must catalog and turn in that work every three years. I just renewed my CPACC last year!)

I was initially a little worried about taking some of these more web-focused accessibility exams. Maybe it’s all the years of web developers looking down their noses at my “lowly” email work, but I was sure that we were going to be so focused on web technology that there wouldn’t be much crossover into the email world. My fears were admittedly more representative of my confidence levels in web development than reality. While several tests really can’t happen in email (cough, cough – live synchronized media), the nuance of the requirements in the Trusted Tester process was just really interesting. And now that I am a Trusted Tester, I feel super confident to be able to evaluate web content that doesn’t exist in email – to the level of my web-focused Trusted Tester comrades.

So – would I recommend other email marketers to take on the Trusted Tester?

YES! First of all, because I would enjoy geeking out with any other email geeks about this, but also because you really do learn a lot. Be warned – they just extended the changeover date for the new version, but if you’re working on version 5 when they roll out the new version, you will have to totally start over. So – if you want to hop on this right now, you might be able to make it, but if you run into obstacles… well, you’ll be that much closer to passing the next version! 😀

If you’re ready to get started, here is the link to the self-enrollment portal.