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Accessibility Standard

WCAG Compliance

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are the global standard for making digital products usable by everyone — including the over 1 billion people worldwide who live with a disability. This page answers the most common questions about WCAG 2.2, conformance levels, legal obligations, and how to run automated compliance checks.

WCAG 2.2 — October 2023ADA · Section 508 · EAA96.3% of sites have failures

What is WCAG?

WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) is the international standard for web accessibility, published by the W3C. WCAG 2.2, the current version, defines how to make web content perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust (POUR) for people with disabilities, including those using assistive technologies.

When to use

Whenever you are building, auditing, or procuring a digital product that must be usable by people with visual, auditory, motor, or cognitive disabilities — or when a legal or contractual requirement references WCAG.

How it works

WCAG is organised around four principles (POUR): Perceivable (information must be presentable in ways users can sense), Operable (interface must be navigable by keyboard and other inputs), Understandable (content and UI must be clear), and Robust (content must be interpretable by assistive technologies). Each principle is broken into guidelines, and each guideline contains testable success criteria.

Evidence

Run a WCAG auditFeatures

What are the WCAG conformance levels?

WCAG has three conformance levels: A (minimum), AA (standard), and AAA (enhanced). Level AA is the legal and industry baseline — it is required by most regulations (ADA, Section 508, EAA) and organisational policies. AAA represents aspirational best practice and is rarely mandated in full.

When to use

Use Level AA as your baseline for any public-facing product. Target Level AAA criteria where the audience is likely to include a high proportion of users with disabilities, or where the regulatory environment demands it.

How it works

  1. 1.Level A — removes the most severe barriers; failing a Level A criterion makes content unusable for some users.
  2. 2.Level AA — the practical compliance target; required by ADA guidance, Section 508, and the EU Accessibility Act. Includes contrast ratio 4.5:1 for normal text.
  3. 3.Level AAA — the highest standard; rarely required entirely but valuable for government, healthcare, and financial services.
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How do I check WCAG compliance?

WCAG compliance can be checked through automated scanning, manual review, and assistive-technology testing. Automated tools like VertaaUX audit your page for detectable failures — contrast ratios, missing alt text, missing form labels, keyboard traps — and map each finding to its WCAG 2.2 success criterion.

When to use

Run automated checks after every significant deployment. Complement with manual keyboard-navigation testing and screen-reader testing (NVDA, VoiceOver) at least once per quarter.

How it works

  1. 1.Enter your URL into VertaaUX. The engine takes a full-page snapshot including rendered CSS and DOM.
  2. 2.Deterministic rules check colour contrast, image alt attributes, form label associations, focus order, heading hierarchy, and more.
  3. 3.Each finding is tagged with its WCAG 2.2 success criterion, conformance level, and a remediation suggestion.
  4. 4.Export the report as JSON or PDF for compliance documentation or developer handoff.

Evidence

  • •Automated tools can detect ~30–40% of WCAG issues; manual review is required for the rest — Deque Research
Start a free auditFeaturesDocs

What are the most common WCAG failures?

The most common WCAG failures are low-contrast text (found on 81% of pages), missing alternative text on images (54.5% of pages), missing form input labels, and keyboard traps. Together these four failure types account for the majority of all detectable accessibility errors on the web.

How it works

  1. 1.Low contrast text (WCAG 1.4.3) — text colour does not meet the 4.5:1 ratio against its background. Found on 81% of pages.
  2. 2.Missing image alt text (WCAG 1.1.1) — images lack an alt attribute, making them invisible to screen readers. Affects 54.5% of images.
  3. 3.Missing form labels (WCAG 1.3.1, 3.3.2) — input fields have no programmatically associated label, leaving them unnamed for assistive technology users.
  4. 4.Keyboard traps (WCAG 2.1.2) — focus enters a component and cannot escape without a mouse, locking out keyboard-only users.

Evidence

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What changed in WCAG 2.2?

WCAG 2.2 (published October 2023) added nine new success criteria focused on cognitive accessibility and mobile usability, including focus appearance (enhanced), dragging movements, target size (minimum), accessible authentication, and consistent help. It removed the Parsing criterion (4.1.1) and is fully backwards-compatible with WCAG 2.1.

How it works

  1. 1.2.4.11 Focus Appearance (Minimum) — keyboard focus indicator must meet size and contrast requirements.
  2. 2.2.5.7 Dragging Movements (AA) — any drag action must have a pointer alternative (tap, click).
  3. 3.2.5.8 Target Size Minimum (AA) — interactive targets must be at least 24×24 CSS pixels.
  4. 4.3.2.6 Consistent Help (A) — help mechanisms must appear in the same location across pages.
  5. 5.3.3.7 Redundant Entry (A) — users are not asked to re-enter information already provided in the same session.
  6. 6.3.3.8 Accessible Authentication Minimum (AA) — cognitive function tests (e.g. puzzles) cannot be the only authentication method.
  7. 7.4.1.1 Parsing removed — modern browsers handle malformed HTML consistently, making this criterion obsolete.

Evidence

  • •WCAG 2.2 published as a W3C Recommendation on 5 October 2023 — W3C
Run a WCAG 2.2 auditFeaturesDocsArticles