The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are the international standard for accessible web content, published by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) of the W3C. The current version, WCAG 2.2, became an official W3C Recommendation on 5 October 2023. It contains 86 testable success criteria, organised under 4 principles and 13 guidelines, and each criterion is assigned to one of three conformance levels: A, AA or AAA. Level AA is the target that matters in practice, because laws around the world anchor their requirements to it. In the EU, the harmonised standard EN 301 549 references WCAG 2.1 Level AA, which makes it the technical benchmark for the European Accessibility Act and the German BFSG. WCAG 2.2 adds nine new success criteria on top of 2.1, covering things like minimum target sizes, visible keyboard focus and login without cognitive puzzles, and removes the outdated parsing criterion 4.1.1.
Who publishes the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines?
WCAG comes from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the same organisation that standardises HTML and CSS, through its Web Accessibility Initiative. The guidelines have a long history: WCAG 1.0 appeared in 1999, WCAG 2.0 followed in 2008 and stayed the reference for a full decade, WCAG 2.1 arrived in 2018 with a focus on mobile and low vision users, and WCAG 2.2 was published in October 2023.
The 2.x versions are backwards compatible by design. A page that conforms to WCAG 2.2 AA also conforms to 2.1 AA and 2.0 AA. That matters because laws often lag behind the newest version, and building against 2.2 keeps you safe on both fronts.
The four WCAG principles: Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust
Every success criterion hangs off one of four principles, remembered by the acronym POUR:
- Perceivable: users must be able to perceive the content. Examples: text alternatives for images, captions for videos, sufficient color contrast.
- Operable: users must be able to operate the interface. Examples: everything works with a keyboard, users get enough time, nothing flashes in seizure-inducing ways, targets are big enough to hit.
- Understandable: content and operation must be understandable. Examples: readable language, predictable navigation, helpful error messages in forms.
- Robust: content must work reliably with current and future user agents, including screen readers. Example: status messages that assistive technology can announce.
The principles are deliberately technology neutral. They apply to a WordPress blog just as much as to a React app or a PDF.
WCAG conformance levels A, AA and AAA compared
| Level | Criteria in WCAG 2.2 | Meaning | Typical examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| A | 31 | Absolute minimum. Failing these locks entire user groups out. | Alt text for images, keyboard operability, no keyboard traps |
| AA | 24 | The standard target, referenced by laws worldwide. | Contrast 4.5:1, visible focus, consistent navigation, error suggestions |
| AAA | 31 | Highest level, aspirational for most sites. | Contrast 7:1, sign language for videos, reading level requirements |
Conformance is cumulative: AA means you meet all Level A and all Level AA criteria. The W3C itself says that full AAA conformance should not be required as a general policy, because some AAA criteria simply cannot be met for every kind of content. Nobody expects sign language interpretation on a bakery website. Individual AAA criteria are still worth adopting where they fit, the enhanced contrast ratio being a popular one.
How many success criteria does WCAG 2.2 have?
WCAG 2.2 contains 86 success criteria: 31 at Level A, 24 at Level AA and 31 at Level AAA. For comparison, WCAG 2.1 had 78. The arithmetic works out because 2.2 adds nine new criteria and removes one: 4.1.1 Parsing, a relic from the era when broken HTML could genuinely crash screen readers. Modern browsers and assistive technologies parse HTML the same way, so the criterion had become obsolete.
What is new in WCAG 2.2? The nine new success criteria
The additions in 2.2 focus on users with motor and cognitive impairments, and honestly, most of them are just good UX:
- 2.4.11 Focus Not Obscured (Minimum), AA: the focused element must not be completely hidden behind sticky headers, cookie banners or chat widgets.
- 2.4.12 Focus Not Obscured (Enhanced), AAA: the focused element must not be hidden at all, not even partially.
- 2.4.13 Focus Appearance, AAA: the focus indicator must meet minimum size and contrast requirements.
- 2.5.7 Dragging Movements, AA: anything that works by drag and drop needs an alternative that works with simple clicks or taps.
- 2.5.8 Target Size (Minimum), AA: click and touch targets must be at least 24 by 24 CSS pixels or have enough spacing around them.
- 3.2.6 Consistent Help, A: help options like contact links or chat must appear in the same place on every page.
- 3.3.7 Redundant Entry, A: do not force users to type the same information twice within one process. Shipping address equals billing address should be a checkbox, not a second form.
- 3.3.8 Accessible Authentication (Minimum), AA: login must not depend on a cognitive puzzle. Transcribing distorted characters or solving memory games is out, and password managers and paste must work.
- 3.3.9 Accessible Authentication (Enhanced), AAA: the same rule without the exceptions that 3.3.8 still allows.
Which WCAG level is required by law?
In the EU, the harmonised standard EN 301 549 defines the technical requirements for both the public sector rules and the European Accessibility Act, and it currently references WCAG 2.1 Level AA. That makes 2.1 AA the formal legal benchmark for the German BFSG and BITV 2.0. An update of EN 301 549 to WCAG 2.2 is expected, which is exactly why building against 2.2 today is the pragmatic choice: you meet the current requirement and the likely future one at the same time.
The picture is similar elsewhere. In the United States, the Department of Justice finalised a rule in 2024 that requires state and local governments to meet WCAG 2.1 AA under ADA Title II, and courts routinely use WCAG as the reference in private ADA lawsuits. If you remember one thing from this section, make it this: WCAG AA is the level the law means when it says accessible.
What do WCAG success criteria look like in practice?
Three examples show how concrete the criteria get. Criterion 1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum) requires a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 between normal text and its background, and 3:1 for large text. That grey-on-white footer text at #999999 on #ffffff? It fails at 2.85:1. Criterion 2.1.1 Keyboard demands that all functionality works without a mouse, which is where most custom dropdowns and image sliders quietly break. And criterion 1.1.1 Non-text Content is the classic alt text rule:
<!-- Informative image: describe what it shows -->
<img src="warehouse.jpg" alt="Employee scanning parcels in the warehouse">
<!-- Decorative image: empty alt so screen readers skip it -->
<img src="divider.svg" alt="">Each criterion in the official document links to techniques and failure examples, and the WCAG quick reference lets you filter all 86 criteria by level and technology, which is far more usable than reading the spec top to bottom.
How do I test WCAG 2.2 compliance?
Start with automated tools: WAVE, axe DevTools, Lighthouse or the accessibility checks built into InspectWP will catch missing alt attributes, contrast failures, missing labels and structural problems in seconds. But keep the limits in mind. Automated checks reliably detect somewhere between a third and half of WCAG failures, because many criteria need human judgement. A machine can see that an image has alt text, but not whether the text actually describes the image.
So complete the picture manually: unplug your mouse and navigate the whole site by keyboard, run a screen reader session with NVDA (free) or VoiceOver, zoom the page to 200 percent, and walk through your most important user journey, usually checkout or contact, end to end. If you can, involve users with disabilities in testing. They will find issues in ten minutes that no audit checklist surfaces.
What comes after WCAG 2.2? A short look at WCAG 3.0
The W3C is working on WCAG 3.0, a ground-up rewrite with a new scoring model that moves away from the binary pass or fail logic. It has been in draft for years and will remain a draft for years more, and the W3C says explicitly that it will not supersede 2.2 for a long time. For planning purposes: WCAG 2.2 AA is the target, and nothing about 3.0 should change your roadmap today.
How does InspectWP check WCAG criteria?
InspectWP includes automated accessibility checks in its website reports and maps common failures to the underlying WCAG criteria: missing alternative texts, insufficient color contrast, form fields without labels, missing document language and broken heading hierarchy, among others. Each finding comes with a severity rating so you can fix the Level A blockers first and work your way up to AA. Combined with scheduled reports, that turns accessibility from a one-off audit into something you actually keep an eye on, which is what the European Accessibility Act expects from you anyway.