AHWD study guide
AHWD · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
The AHWD credential is aimed at people who build, publish, or maintain digital content and want to demonstrate working competence in web accessibility. It suits web developers, content authors, designers, document and media producers, and QA or compliance staff who need more than a passing familiarity with WCAG. The AHWD study guide has 6 sections and about 1,710 words.
01Accessibility Standards and Regulations
Accessibility law and policy operate at several layers, and exam questions often test which layer governs a given situation. At the international level, the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) establishes broad rights; Article 9 addresses accessibility.
319 words, about 2 min02Disability Awareness and Inclusive Design Principles
Candidates should understand disability categories - visual, auditory, motor/physical, cognitive, neurological, speech, and multiple - plus situational and temporary impairments (a broken wrist, bright sunlight, a noisy train). The social model of disability locates barriers in the environment, not the person; the medical model locates them in the individual.
285 words, about 1 min03Accessible Web Content (WCAG)
WCAG is organized around four principles (POUR) and three conformance levels (A, AA, AAA). Candidates must know success criteria by number and intent.
229 words, about 1 min04Assistive Technology and User Agents
Assistive technology (AT) spans screen readers (JAWS, NVDA, VoiceOver, TalkBack), screen magnifiers , speech input (Dragon, voice control), switch access , refreshable braille displays , alternative keyboards , and cognitive aids . AT interacts with the accessibility tree , which browsers and operating systems derive from the DOM and ARIA.
306 words, about 2 min05Accessible Document and Media Production
Electronic documents (PDF, Word, PowerPoint, spreadsheets) and media (audio, video) must be authored accessibly. In Word/PowerPoint : use built-in heading styles, real lists, alt text on images, table headers, unique slide titles, and reading-order checks.
290 words, about 1 min06Testing, Evaluation, and Remediation
Accessibility testing combines automated and manual methods. Automated tools (axe, Lighthouse, WAVE) catch a subset of issues - missing alt, contrast, labels - but cannot judge meaningfulness or keyboard flow.
281 words, about 1 min