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tl;dr
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Web Content Accessibility Guide (WCAG)
- WCAG is the internationally recognized legal and technical standard for web accessibility.
- W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) is responsible for developing international standards for HTML, CSS, and other web technologies.
- The W3C regularly updates WCAG to reflect the latest technological advancements.
- Since 2021, work has been in progress on WCAG 3.0 to provide guidance for emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and virtual reality.
- WCAG is based on the POUR principles, which are testable guidelines and success criterion.
- WCAG covers the following
- desktop & mobile devices
- content
- two-way interactions (such as forms)
- embedded third-party content
Conformance levels
WCAG has 3 levels of success criteria:
| A |
AA |
AAA |
| the most basic and minimum level or conformance |
the most achievable and meaningful level of conformance |
the most advanced and maximum level of conformance |
💡 About WCAG 2.1
- WCAG 2.1 Level AA is the globally accepted legal standard for digital accessibility. It is the level that most organizations aim for.
- WCAG 2.1 builds upon WCAG 2.0, introducing 17 new success criteria that focuses on:
- Mobile Accessibility
- support for user interactions using touch
- handling more complex gestures
- avoiding unintended activation of an interface
- Visual Accessibility (low vision)
- extends contrast requirements to graphics
- new requirements for text and layout customization to support better visual perception of web content and controls
- Cognitive Accessibility
- requirement to provide specific purpose of input controls
- requirements to support timeouts due to inactivity
💧 POUR Principles
The 4 overarching principles that serves as a framework for web accessibility
Perceivable
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Information and the user interface must be presented to users in ways they can perceive
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