Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 covers a wide range of recommendations for making web content more accessible. Following these guidelines will make content more accessible to a wider range of people with disabilities, including accommodations for blindness and low vision, deafness and hearing loss, limited movement, speech disabilities, photosensitivity, and combinations of these, and some accommodation for learning disabilities and cognitive limitations; but will not address every user need for people with these disabilities. These guidelines address accessibility of web content on any kind of device (including desktops, laptops, kiosks, and mobile devices). Following these guidelines will also often make web content more usable to users in general.
WCAG 2.2 success criteria are written as testable statements that are not technology-specific. Guidance about satisfying the success criteria in specific technologies, as well as general information about interpreting the success criteria, is provided in separate documents.
WCAG 2.2 extends Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 [WCAG21], which was published as a W3C Recommendation June 2018. Content that conforms to WCAG 2.2 also conforms to WCAG 2.0 and WCAG 2.1. The WG intends that for policies requiring conformance to WCAG 2.0 or WCAG 2.1, WCAG 2.2 can provide an alternate means of conformance. The publication of WCAG 2.2 does not deprecate or supersede WCAG 2.0 or WCAG 2.1. While WCAG 2.0 and WCAG 2.1 remain W3C Recommendations, the W3C advises the use of WCAG 2.2 to maximize future applicability of accessibility efforts. The W3C also encourages use of the most current version of WCAG when developing or updating web accessibility policies.
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 defines how to make web content more accessible to people with disabilities. Accessibility involves a wide range of disabilities, including visual, auditory, physical, speech, cognitive, language, learning, and neurological disabilities. Although these guidelines cover a wide range of issues, they are not able to address the needs of people with all types, degrees, and combinations of disability. These guidelines also make web content more usable by older individuals with changing abilities due to aging and often improve usability for users in general.
WCAG 2.2 is developed through the W3C process in cooperation with individuals and organizations around the world, with a goal of providing a shared standard for web content accessibility that meets the needs of individuals, organizations, and governments internationally. WCAG 2.2 builds on WCAG 2.0 [WCAG20] and WCAG 2.1 [WCAG21], which in turn built on WCAG 1.0 [WAI-WEBCONTENT] and is designed to apply broadly to different web technologies now and in the future, and to be testable with a combination of automated testing and human evaluation.
Significant challenges were encountered in defining additional criteria to address cognitive, language, and learning disabilities, including a short timeline for development as well as challenges in reaching consensus on testability, implementability, and international considerations of proposals. Work will carry on in this area in future versions of WCAG.
The individuals and organizations that use WCAG vary widely and include web designers and developers, policy makers, purchasing agents, teachers, and students. In order to meet the varying needs of this audience, several layers of guidance are provided including overall principles, general guidelines, testable success criteria and a rich collection of sufficient techniques, advisory techniques, and documented common failures with examples, resource links and code.
Principles - At the top are four principles that provide the foundation for web accessibility: perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust.
Guidelines - Under the principles are guidelines. The 13 guidelines provide the basic goals that authors should work toward in order to make content more accessible to users with different disabilities. The guidelines are not testable, but provide the framework and overall objectives to help authors understand the success criteria and better implement the techniques.
Success Criteria - For each guideline, testable success criteria are provided to allow WCAG 2.2 to be used where requirements and conformance testing are necessary such as in design specification, purchasing, regulation, and contractual agreements. In order to meet the needs of different groups and different situations, three levels of conformance are defined: A (lowest), AA, and AAA (highest).
Sufficient and Advisory Techniques - For each of the guidelines and success criteria in the WCAG 2.2 document itself, the working group has also documented a wide variety of techniques. The techniques are informative and fall into two categories: those that are sufficient for meeting the success criteria and those that are advisory. The advisory techniques go beyond what is required by the individual success criteria and allow authors to better address the guidelines. Some advisory techniques address accessibility barriers that are not covered by the testable success criteria. Where common failures are known, these are also documented.
All of these layers of guidance (principles, guidelines, success criteria, and sufficient and advisory techniques) work together to provide guidance on how to make content more accessible. Note that even content that conforms at the highest level (AAA) will not be accessible to individuals with all types, degrees, or combinations of disability, particularly in the cognitive, language, and learning areas.
WCAG 2.2 extends WCAG 2.1 by adding new success criteria, definitions to support them, and guidelines to organize the additions. This additive approach helps to make it clear that sites which conform to WCAG 2.2 also conform to WCAG 2.1. The Accessibility Guidelines Working Group recommends that sites adopt WCAG 2.2 as their new conformance target, even if formal obligations mention previous versions, to provide improved accessibility and to anticipate future policy changes.
The following success criteria are new in WCAG 2.2:
2.4.11 Focus Not Obscured (Minimum) (AA)
2.4.12 Focus Not Obscured (Enhanced) (AAA)
2.4.13 Focus Appearance (AAA)
2.5.7 Dragging Movements (AA)
2.5.8 Target Size (Minimum) (AA)
3.2.6 Consistent Help (A)
3.3.7 Redundant Entry (A)
3.3.8 Accessible Authentication (Minimum) (AA)
3.3.9 Accessible Authentication (Enhanced) (AAA)
WCAG 2.2 also introduces new sections detailing aspects of the specification which may impact privacy and security.
In parallel with WCAG 2.2, the Accessibility Guidelines Working Group is developing another major version of accessibility guidelines. The result of this work is expected to be a more substantial restructuring of web accessibility guidance than would be realistic for dot-releases of WCAG 2. The work follows a research-focused, user-centered design methodology to produce the most effective and flexible outcome, including the roles of content authoring, user agent support, and authoring tool support. This is a multi-year effort, so WCAG 2.2 is needed as an interim measure to provide updated web accessibility guidance to reflect changes on the web since the publication of WCAG 2.0. The Working Group might also develop additional interim versions, continuing with WCAG 2.2, on a similar short timeline to provide additional support while the major version is completed.
WhatsApp 7/24: +90 542 575 0743
