WCAG Conformance, A, AA, AAA? Oh my!
WCAG compliance
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) is developed through the W3C process in cooperation with individuals and organizations around the world, with a goal of providing a single shared standard for web content accessibility that meets the needs of individuals, organizations, and governments internationally.
WCAG 2 Overview
What WCAG does
WCAG focuses on removing barriers so that users can perceive, understand, navigate, interact, and contribute to the web.
If you’re interested in learning more about each disability category that WGAC addresses, click on the links below:
WCAG updates
WCAG checklist
Are you curious about what’s in WCAG’s guide? I provide a checklist to help you along. Remember, don’t let the list overwhelm you, we will address the items on the list.
Conformance Level
To help teams prioritize which violations are higher priorities, WCAG created conformance levels.
The 3 conformance levels
- A – Basic requirements
- AA – Overall requirements
- AAA – Highest requirements
The levels are accumulative. Meaning, that to be able to claim that you’ve met AA conformance, you must meet both A and AA levels.
Which level should you meet?
Let’s start with the highest level, AAA
AAA conformance is usually a standard that a government or financial institution strives to meet. However, it’s very hard to satisfy all success criteria presented for AAA. W3C recognizes that this is a very high standard for the average website.
It is not recommended that Level AAA conformance be required as a general policy for entire sites because it is not possible to satisfy all Level AAA Success Criteria for some content.
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0. (2008, December 11). W3C.
What about level A?
This is the lowest level of compliance. I don’t recommend stopping at Level A. The truth is, it’s very likely that you’ll exclude many of your users if you only focus on this level.
AA, that sweet spot
There is no possible way to be 100% AA compliant. Aiming for AA will show your users you want to make your website inclusive to all your users. Most companies do well enough to aim for level AA.
To learn more about the benefits of accessibility, read 5 reasons why accessibility is important.
The Goldilocks Criteria
Most companies need to focus on WCAG 2.2 AA compliance.
This website will help you achieve that goal.
The video below features Goldilocks waking up and saying, “The bed was just right!”
