✏️ Sign The Petition on Change.org at: https://c.org/MZnTBDjCBK (Share this link).
If you haven’t read Part 1, Part 2 or Part 3 of this article, I do encourage you to read them first, as they set the stage for this, my fourth installment.
Quick recap. On November 25, 2024 I was humbled by the news that the Apex Program had chosen me to receive a full, $7,500 USD scholarship to the Apex Program, a 12-week cybersecurity training initiative intended to empower underrepresented communities, including blind people, sponsored by Novacoast, Inc.
What I actually received was approximately 21 Word Documents, no LMS, and not a shred of assistance from a single human being.
I studied anyway. For a solid year. And on October 1, 2025 I travelled to a Pearson Vue testing center to take the CompTIA Network+ exam, and I was unable to take it, because the diagrams on that test carried no verified ALT descriptions for my reader to read to me. Her words were, “I don’t know what to do here.”
I wrote about it. Honestly. And for that honesty, Apex cancelled my scholarship. Their words were, “You’ve made us the enemy.”
Then the CNIB stepped in and wrote to Pearson Vue on my behalf. Pearson’s tone changed and they offered me real options to re-test. CompTIA granted me a full credit toward the Security+ exam. And so I re-studied every single chapter, all over again, and I went back.
And here, dear reader, is what happened when I did. All of it.
I Went Back on May 27, 2026
My appointment was at 10:00 AM at the Pearson Professional Centre in Toronto East. I was given 270 minutes.
Pearson approved every accommodation I asked for, and I want to list them here, because I want you to see how thorough that approval looked on paper.
- Additional time, 100% more than the standard allotment.
- Frequent and extended breaks, with the exam clock still running.
- A beverage in a transparent, spill-proof, sports-type bottle with a spout.
- A snack in the testing room.
- A glucose meter and testing supplies, as I am diabetic.
- A Reader, to read the directions and the test questions to me, in a separate room.
- A Recorder, to input my answers as I dictated them, in a separate room.
Look at that list. It is a good list! It is the list of an organization that is paying attention.
And I want to say something before I go one step further, because it matters and because it is true. The Pearson staff who worked with me that day were professional, patient and kind. Every one of them. My reader was simply wonderful and she did her absolute best for me all day long. Not one thing that went wrong that day was the fault of the people in that room.
That is precisely the point I am going to make in this article. Good people were handed a broken process. And no amount of kindness can fix a diagram that has no description.
Why I Chose a Reader and Not JAWS
This is the question I have been asked most, so let me answer it plainly.
Before I booked, I spent a great deal of time talking through my two options with Pearson. Option one, take the exam myself using JAWS, my screen reader. Option two, have a human reader read the exam to me.
Pearson strongly recommended the reader.
I still wanted JAWS on the table, so I asked them one simple question. If I use JAWS and something goes wrong with it during the exam, will there be a JAWS technician on site who can help me?
Their answer was no. The only support available would be remote. A telephone number.
Now, dear reader, let me tell you why that answer made the decision for me. When I was completing my law degree, JAWS malfunctioned in the middle of one of my examinations. There was nobody present who could resolve it. I lost that exam. I had to come back on another day and take the whole thing again.
I was not prepared to risk that a second time. Not after a year of study. Not twice.
So between Pearson’s strong recommendation and Pearson’s confirmation that no one on site could help me if JAWS faltered, the reader became the only workable option I had.
And here is the part that still sits with me. I will now never know how accessible that exam would have been had I taken it with JAWS. That door closed on the advice I was given.
The Documents They Read to Me
When I arrived, Pearson’s staff read the examination agreement documents aloud to me. All of the terms. All of the conditions. Everything I was agreeing to.
At no time did anyone tell me that those documents were available online, where I could have read them myself, in advance, in my own time, at my own pace, with my own screen reader.
I found that out later, from CompTIA, who confirmed that their legal terms, including the Candidate Testing Agreement, are linked throughout the scheduling process and are available at their legal page. They further confirmed that those materials have been checked and are accessible via screen reader.
So they existed. And they were accessible. And nobody told me.
Think about what that means for a moment. A blind candidate sat in a room and had a legal agreement recited to her out loud by a stranger, because nobody mentioned she could have read it herself.
I do not doubt that those documents are accessible. I have never doubted it. My concern is that accessibility that nobody tells you about is not accessibility. It is a secret.
One Person, Two Jobs
My approval letter listed a Reader and it listed a Recorder. Two functions. My understanding, and I believe it is the correct one, is that these are meant to be carried out by two different individuals.
The reader reads. The recorder records. They are separate roles for a reason.
On the day, Pearson provided me with one person who did both.
I raise this not to criticize that woman, who worked hard for me for hours, but to ask a simple question. If the accommodation as approved says two people, and one person arrives, has the approved accommodation actually been delivered?
And Then the Diagrams. Again.
Once again, within the first several questions, I hit them.
Diagrams.
My reader did her best. She truly did. She looked at each one and she described to me what she believed she was seeing.
But dear reader, that is exactly the problem, and it is the same problem I described to you in October of 2025, and it still had not been fixed.
At no time did my reader read out a prepared, validated description of any diagram. She gave me her own interpretation. Her honest, well-meaning, entirely unofficial interpretation.
And I had no way on this earth to know whether that interpretation was accurate. Or complete. Or whether she had noticed the one detail the question actually turned on.
I was not being tested on networking. I was being tested on one woman’s ability to describe a picture she had never seen before, under pressure, in real time, to someone who could not check her work.
That is not an examination. That is a guessing game with a timer on it.
My Results, on a Piece of Paper
When it was over, Pearson staff printed my results. On paper. And handed them to me.
I asked for an electronic version that I could read myself. I was told that was not possible.
So my sighted friend, who had been waiting for me all those hours, had to read me my own examination results.
I want you to sit with that image for a second, because I have had to. A blind woman, who has just spent an entire day proving she cannot be given information in accessible form, is handed her results in a format she cannot read.
What the Paper Said
I fell short.
I am not going to dress that up for you. I did not pass. And I am not going to pretend the barriers were the only reason, because I will never be able to separate the two. That is the whole cruelty of it. When the process is inaccessible, you never find out what you actually knew.
What I can tell you is this. I studied for over a year. I mastered all 21 chapters. I could pass the practice tests at 100%. And I sat down in that room and was asked to evaluate network configurations that were delivered to me as pictures.
What This Has Cost Me
Let us talk about money, because advocacy is not free and neither is any of this.
Two attempts at the Network+ exam. Two exams paid for.
Apex’s scholarship was supposed to include the expense of my first examination. That exam cost $390 USD. Apex reimbursed me $100 CAD.
I will let you do that arithmetic yourself.
And then, having cancelled my scholarship over my articles, Apex left me to pay for the second attempt entirely out of my own pocket. Which I did. And it has been a great financial burden. I want to thank every single person who contributed to my GoFundMe campaign to help me retake that test. You made the second attempt possible. You did what the program was supposed to do.
And before anyone asks, because it is a fair question and one I have already been asked: yes, CompTIA very kindly granted me a full credit, and I remain grateful for it. But that credit is for the Security+ exam. That is a different examination, and one I have not yet sat. It did not cover either of my two attempts at Network+. Those were mine to pay for.
Where Is Apex Now?
This is a question I did not expect to be asking, and I ask it genuinely, because I do not know the answer.
The Apex Program that I signed up for in November of 2024 was Novacoast’s. Novacoast announced it. Novacoast sponsored it. When Apex’s Vice President of Operations wrote to tell me my scholarship was gone, her legal counsel was copied from a Novacoast email address.
Today, if you visit the Apex Program’s website, the footer of every single page reads: “The Apex Program is an EnterpriseKC initiative operated by AccessCyber, LLC dba The Apex Program.” Across the top of every page it says, “The Apex Program is now part of EnterpriseKC’s cybersecurity workforce development portfolio.”
And Novacoast, the company that announced this program, sponsored it, and awarded me my scholarship, is no longer named anywhere on it.
So the program changed hands.
I have no knowledge of the terms of that change, and I make no accusation about it. I only observe that it happened, and I ask the obvious question. When a program that took my money and my year changes owners, who is left holding responsibility for what happened to me?
What That Website Promises Today
Now let me show you the part I found hardest to read.
Here is what The Apex Program’s website promises a student today, word for word.
On its About page, the program “was built from the ground up to be accessible first.”
On its Program page: twelve weeks, laid out as weeks one through six and weeks seven through twelve. Preparation “for the CompTIA Network+ and Security+ exams.” Lectures. Video tutorials. Quizzes. Hands-on labs.
And this sentence, which I have now read more times than is good for me:
“Students have 24/7/365 access to expert guidance and support through chat and email, with a commitment to direct connection with an instructor in 24 hours or less.”
Dear reader, that is the program I believed I had been given in November of 2024.
Twelve weeks. Network+ and Security+. Accessible from the ground up. An instructor within 24 hours.
What I actually received was a login my screen reader could not read, no learning platform of any kind, roughly 21 typo-riddled Word Documents, practice tests whose text I could not even search and several of whose answers were wrong, and an organization that did not understand the question when I asked them how a blind person should study for this exam.
I want to be scrupulously fair here, because fairness is the only currency I have left in this story. That website belongs to the new operators, not to the people who dealt with me. I have no evidence either way about what is delivered today, and I hope with all my heart that every word of it is true, because if it is, then blind students are finally getting what I was promised.
But I would be failing you if I did not say the obvious thing out loud. Every single item on that page is what I was told I was buying. I paid for it with a year of my life. And when I said plainly that I had not received it, the people running it then took my scholarship away and called me the enemy.
So to whoever stewards this program now: you have inherited something valuable and something damaged, at the same time. My contact details are at the bottom of this page. I would genuinely help you make that page true.
Three Parties. Three Failures. One Blind Student in the Middle.
Let me set this out as plainly as I can, because after four articles I owe you clarity.
Apex failed me on the curriculum. They marketed a program that prepares blind and visually impaired people for these two exams. What they delivered was a login my screen reader could not read, no functioning learning management system at all, and roughly 21 Word Documents which were riddled with typos and visibly out of date. Their practice tests were not even coded so that a blind student could search the text. Several of their answers were wrong. When I asked how a blind person should study for this exam, they had no idea what I was talking about.
And when I said so, out loud, truthfully, they took my scholarship away. They have never once acknowledged that their materials were not accessible.
Pearson failed me on the delivery. Twice. In October 2025 the reader could not describe the diagrams at all. In May 2026 the reader described the diagrams from her own imagination, because nobody had given her anything else to read. My agreements were read aloud to me when they could have been read by me. My reader and my recorder were one person. My results came on paper.
CompTIA has been the most responsive of the three, and I want to be fair about that. They granted me a Security+ credit when they had no obligation to. They asked me real questions. And their July 9 letter told me something no one else had told me in nearly two years, that the Network+ examination is available in a JAWS-compatible format designed to let a blind candidate complete it independently, without any human reader at all.
I am glad to know it. I am also entitled to ask, and I do ask, without anger: why did nobody tell me that before I sat the exam twice?
So I Wrote to Them Myself
Here is something I have learned in twenty years of this work. Nobody comes looking for you. If you want an answer, you have to go and ask for it, by name, in writing, addressed to the person whose desk it actually lands on.
So that is what I did.
On June 24, 2026, I wrote directly to Todd Thibodeaux, then the Chief Executive Officer of CompTIA, and to Gary Gates, the Managing Director of Pearson Vue. Not to a support form. Not to a general inbox that answers three weeks later with a ticket number. To them, by name, with their senior people copied on both sides.
I told them exactly what had happened to me on May 27. I told them the examination documents had not been given to me in a format I could read, and that I had been made to sit and listen while a stranger recited a legal agreement aloud to me that I was perfectly capable of reading myself. I told them about the diagrams.
And then I told them the part I actually care about. Certifications in networking and cybersecurity are one of the very few genuine routes into a well-paid career for a blind person, at a time when unemployment in my community remains catastrophic. I said that access to a professional examination should never depend on whether a reader happens to be available, or on how good that particular reader happens to be on that particular morning.
I did not write to complain. I wrote to offer. More than twenty years of accessibility consulting, given freely, to help two of the biggest names in certification testing fix something that is entirely fixable.
And then I waited.
CompTIA’s Questions, and My Answers
Two weeks later, on July 9, 2026, CompTIA wrote back.
Their reply put two direct questions to me, so that they could, in their words, “identify where the process may have broken down.” I answered them in full on July 27, 2026. Here is that exchange, so that you can see it exactly as it happened.
❓ CompTIA’s First Question: Could you walk us through your scheduling process and the accommodation request you submitted?
✅ My Answer: I requested additional time, breaks as needed, and, as a diabetic, the ability to bring in a beverage and snacks to manage my sugar levels. Pearson approved all of it, along with a Reader to read the directions and questions and a Recorder to input my answers, both in a separate room. My appointment was May 27, 2026 at 10:00 AM, 270 minutes, at the Pearson Professional Centre in Toronto East.
❓ CompTIA’s Second Question: Did Pearson VUE explicitly deny your ability to use JAWS or indicate that it was unavailable for your session?
✅ My Answer: Before choosing, I spent a great deal of time discussing my options with Pearson, whether to use JAWS, or to have a reader read the exam to me. Pearson strongly recommended the reader option. When I asked whether a JAWS support technician would be available on site in case I ran into any difficulty with JAWS during the exam, Pearson told me no, the only technical support would be remote, by calling a phone number. Given my history of losing an entire law-school examination to a mid-exam JAWS failure with no one present to help, and given Pearson’s own strong recommendation, the reader became the only workable option available to me for this session.
💬 Comment: And I added the observation that matters most to me, which I will repeat here for you. Within the first several questions on May 27, I encountered questions that depended on diagrams. At no time did the reader read a prepared, validated description of any diagram. She offered her own interpretation of what she believed each one showed, and I had no way to judge whether that interpretation was accurate or complete.
I told them I was heartened to learn the JAWS-compatible format exists, because that is exactly the kind of access I want. And I offered, as I have offered from the very beginning, to work alongside them so that whichever path a blind candidate takes, JAWS or a reader, an accurate description of every diagram is always available.
And CompTIA’s Reply?
On July 28, 2026, I received this, in its entirety:
“Dear Ms. Jodhan, Thank you for your helpful feedback! We will look into this. CompTIA Legal”
That is the whole letter.
I had sent them a detailed, itemized, genuinely constructive account of a two-year barrier, along with an offer of professional help from someone with twenty years in this field, free of charge, in good faith.
“We will look into this.”
Dear reader, I am not going to hold my breath.
Where It Stands as I Publish This
But I want to be precise with you about where this actually sits today, because it is not over.
My answers went back to the same people my first letter had gone to. Not only CompTIA’s legal team, but Todd Thibodeaux himself, and senior people at Pearson Vue as well. Everyone who is in a position to do something about this now has the whole of it, in writing, from me.
And the question CompTIA asked me is worth reading twice. They wanted to understand, in their words, the circumstances that led to my use of a reader on May 27. Think about what is buried in that sentence. They are asking why a blind candidate ended up depending on a human being to describe pictures, when an independent, JAWS-compatible version of that very exam existed the whole time.
That is the right question. It is the question I have been trying to get somebody to ask since October of 2025.
So no, I am not going to call this the last word. It may not be. My account is with their lawyers as you read this. If something comes of it, you will hear about it here, and I will tell you the truth about that too, whichever way it falls.
And While All of This Was Happening, CompTIA Changed Hands Too
There is one more piece to this, and I only found it while preparing this article. It is not gossip and it is not a theory. It is a matter of public record, and I think you are entitled to know it.
On November 4, 2024, two private equity firms, H.I.G. Capital and Thoma Bravo, announced that they were acquiring the CompTIA brand together with its entire IT certification and training business. In the words of the announcement itself: “Following the closing of the transaction, CompTIA will operate as a for-profit company under H.I.G. and Thoma Bravo’s ownership.”
The membership association that had carried the CompTIA name for decades was separated out and renamed. It is now the Global Technology Industry Association, and its own website puts it plainly: “In 2025, the CompTIA brand, along with its training and certification business was sold to operate as a for-profit company.”
The certifications kept the CompTIA name. They just stopped belonging to an association and started belonging to investors.
Now read that first date again. November 4, 2024.
I was awarded my Apex scholarship on November 25, 2024. Three weeks later.
Which means every exam I have sat, every accommodation I was approved for, every diagram nobody described to me, and every letter I have written, has happened inside a certification business owned by private equity. I did not know that. Nobody told me that either.
And the gentleman I addressed my June letter to, Todd Thibodeaux, who led CompTIA for nearly eighteen years, has since departed. He has been succeeded as Chief Executive Officer by Sean Ryan.
I want to be careful and fair here, because I have tried to be careful and fair for four articles and I am not going to stop on the last page. I am not saying that private equity caused any of this. I have no evidence of that, and I will not pretend that I do. There are for-profit companies that do accessibility beautifully and nonprofits that do it very badly indeed.
But dear reader, look at the shape of my story now.
The program that took my scholarship money changed owners. The certification body that owns my exam changed owners. The executive I wrote to has gone. And I am still here. Still blind. Still unable to see a diagram that nobody has described to me. Still asking the same question I asked in October of 2025.
When everyone who made the promise has moved on, who is left to keep it?
That is not a rhetorical question. I would genuinely like an answer.
What All of This Could Have Been
Now let me tell you the part that actually breaks my heart, because it is not the exam.
Unemployment among blind and vision impaired people is catastrophic. It has been catastrophic my entire life. And here, sitting right in front of us, is one of the few genuinely good answers anybody has come up with.
Cybersecurity and networking are fields where a blind person can absolutely excel. The work is logical. It is text-based at its core. It is remote-friendly. It pays properly. It is growing faster than the people available to do it.
Three organizations stand between blind candidates and those careers. A training provider. An exam delivery company. A certification body.
Not one of them has to invent anything. Apex has to build a learning platform that a screen reader can read, and write study materials without typos and wrong answers. Pearson has to tell candidates their documents are online, staff the accommodations they approve, and give results in a readable format. CompTIA has to make sure that every diagram on every exam carries a validated text description, and that candidates are told the accessible format exists.
That is it. That is the whole list. None of it is difficult. None of it is expensive. None of it requires a single new invention.
And if those three organizations did those things, do you know what would happen? Blind people would start passing these exams. And then blind people would start getting these jobs. And the unemployment number that has haunted my community my entire life would start to move.
That is what is being left on the table here. Not my certificate. Not $7,500. A door, that could be opened, for thousands of people, by three organizations who could each fix their piece of it inside of a year.
So Where Do We Go from Here?
I will be honest with you, because I have been honest with you for four articles and I am not going to stop now.
I do not know.
I am not certain I have another attempt in me. I have studied this material twice. I have sat in that room twice. I have written four articles, launched a petition, briefed my legal counsel at the ARCH Disability Law Centre of Toronto, and written directly to the chief executives of both companies. I am one blind woman and I have done everything I know how to do.
But please hear me clearly on this next part, because it is the only part that actually matters.
I am not the point. I was never the point.
Somewhere out there is a blind person who is going to sign up for one of these programs next year. They will study. They will work twice as hard as everyone else, because we always do. And then they are going to walk into a room and meet a diagram that nobody described.
And unlike me, they will not have a platform. They will not have a petition. They will not have a business partner who will fight beside them, or a CNIB that writes letters, or twenty years of standing in this field. They will just be a person who did everything right and got stopped by a picture.
I have heard from those people. They wrote to me after Part 2. And what every one of them had in common was that they had no idea what to do, and no one willing to help them, and no meaningful path to change anything.
That is who I am still writing for.
What You Can Do
If you have read this far, you already care. So let me ask you for three things.
- Sign and share the petition. https://c.org/MZnTBDjCBK Every name is one more person who cannot be ignored.
- Share these four articles. Especially with anyone at Apex, Pearson Vue or CompTIA. Especially with anyone thinking of enrolling in a certification program as a blind or vision impaired student.
- If you work at any of these three organizations, come and talk to me. My offer has not changed and it will not change. I will help you fix this. I will do it gladly. My contact details are at the bottom of this page and they have been at the bottom of every one of these articles since October 2025.
To CompTIA, to Pearson Vue, and to Apex
You have my thanks for what you did do, and you have my honesty about what you did not.
CompTIA, you helped me when you did not have to, and I remain grateful. Please finish the job. Validated descriptions on every diagram, and tell candidates the accessible format exists.
Pearson Vue, your people were kind to me. Give them what they need to actually do their jobs.
And Apex, wherever you are now and whoever owns you: a blind student trusted you with a year of her life. You could have fixed this quietly, at any point, and been the heroes of this story. You chose instead to call me the enemy.
I hope whoever runs you today makes a different choice than the people who ran you then.
And So We Close Another Chapter
Four articles. Two exams. One year of study, taken twice. One scholarship, given and then taken away for telling the truth.
I did not get my certification. I am not going to pretend otherwise, and I am not going to hide it, because hiding it would make me exactly the kind of person this whole series has been written against.
But I told the truth, every step of the way, and it is all here on the record now, where the next blind candidate can find it. That is worth something. I have to believe that is worth something.
So to every person out there who is fighting a barrier that everyone around them insists is not there: I see you. It is real. You are not imagining it and you are not the problem.
Keep your receipts. Write it all down. Say it out loud even when it costs you, because it will cost you.
And do not let them win.
Onward and upward!
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA
Global Leader In Disability Rights, Digital Accessibility, And Inclusive Policy Reform
Turning policy into progress for people with disabilities.
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