Yes, it still does require a student to know to take the SAT. But that’s why we went with a requirement — at least it’s clearer and more easily understood than a suspended requirement (we never described ourselves as test optional — we always said that students should take the tests and send us scores, if they could do so safely). Optionality is more confusing than a requirement. If we ever drop the SAT/ACTs, we will go test-free, and it will only be because we think we have developed methods to do without them.
There is a common misunderstanding that removing the SAT requirement makes a place like MIT more accessible. The reason it’s a misunderstanding is that our prime directive is making sure a student is prepared for MIT. It seems people assume that we use the SAT scores to weed out applicants who otherwise looked good, but we don’t; we use the SAT scores to give us confidence in students where we didn’t have enough information to be sure. If a student doesn’t submit the tests, that doesn’t help them demonstrate preparation. They may be able to show that preparation through other means — like very advanced coursework at their school or a local college, or strong AP/IB tests, etc — but those things are (even more) restrictive than the SAT.