8 min read
WCAG 2.1 was published on 5 June 2018, and Level AA is the baseline for nearly every single compliance requirement worldwide. It has 78 success criteria, made up of the 61 from WCAG 2.0 in 2008 plus 17 additions.
The WCAG 2.2 release date was 5 October 2023, and it added 9 new success criteria, bringing the total number to 87.
It’s worth mentioning that one older criterion was retired. 4.1.1 Parsing. W3C dropped it because browsers and assistive technology now handle messy markup well enough that it was testing a problem which had largely stopped existing.
For WCAG 2.2, that brings the total number down to 86. Phew, glad we got the maths out of the way.
On this page
WCAG 2.2 is not the required baseline everywhere… Yet.
This is the part worth understanding, because it explains why nobody is chasing you about 2.2 and why it’s worth looking at.
Most accessibility regulation does not name WCAG directly. It points at EN 301 549, the European standard for ICT accessibility that the European Accessibility Act leans on, and that currently references WCAG 2.1 AA. W3C expects the next version of EN 301 549 to move to 2.2. In the US, the Department of Justice’s ADA Title II rule adopts WCAG 2.1 AA for state and local government, while Title III, which covers private business, still has no adopted technical standard at all.
The UK is further ahead than most. The Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018 already require WCAG 2.2 AA, and GOV.UK says plainly that a public sector website meets its legal requirement by meeting the WCAG 2.2 AA standard. Those regulations sit on top of the Equality Act 2010, which creates the underlying duty to make reasonable adjustments but names no version of WCAG at all.
So the direction of travel is not in question. It is a matter of when, not whether.
Because later versions of WCAG do not replace earlier ones, they are backwards compatible. WCAG 2.2 does not deprecate 2.1, so meeting the newer version can only help you future-proof your site. Now is a perfect time to get ahead of the game with the new nine.
The nine additions since the WCAG 2.2 release date, by level
Here are all nine, in level order. Two sit at Level A, four at Level AA, and three at Level AAA.
- Level A, must have: 2 new essential additions
- Level AA, should have: 4 new essential additions
- Level AAA, nice to have: 3 new additions
The first six are the ones that matter for AA conformance.
Level A: Must have
If you offer help, whether that is a phone number, a contact form or a chat widget, keep it in the same relative place on every page that has it.
Makes complete sense and needs almost no defending. If someone found your help link once, they should be able to find it again without hunting for it.
Do not ask for the same information twice in the same process. If someone gave you their address at step two, do not ask again at step five. Auto-fill it, or let them select it.
An annoying user experience problem that should have been solved years ago. It sits in the standard because it disproportionately affects people with cognitive disabilities, but let’s be honest, who has ever enjoyed retyping their own full address twice?
Level AA: Should have
3. 2.4.11 Focus Not Obscured (Minimum)
When something receives keyboard focus, it must not be entirely hidden behind other content.
This one is well overdue. Modern interfaces are full of sticky headers, cookie bars, and pop-ups; plenty of them were built without anyone considering what happens to a keyboard. The page focus moves, the page scrolls, and the element you are now on is sitting behind a banner, completely inaccessible.
Worth a quick check while you are here. Open your homepage, put your hands on the keyboard and press Tab twenty or so times, watching the outline. If it disappears behind your header rather than staying visible, that is this failure exactly.
Anything that works by dragging must also work without dragging, using a single pointer. Tapping, clicking or long-pressing, rather than holding and moving. This includes things like sliders, sortable lists, image comparison widgets, map pins.
This is an obvious overdue criterion, and it points at something more basic. People should be able to use your entire website without a mouse, and that has been required since 2.0 through 2.1.1 Keyboard. Dragging was a gap that took until 2.2 to close properly, sheesh.
5. 2.5.8 Target Size (Minimum)
Interactive targets need to be at least 24 by 24 CSS pixels, or have enough spacing around them to amount to the same thing.
Appropriate for quality interface design, and again overdue. Anyone with a tremor, or using a phone one-handed on a moving bus, has been dealing with buttons crammed together for too long. This one tells that story from the user’s side.
6. 3.3.8 Accessible Authentication (Minimum)
Do not make someone remember something, solve a puzzle, solve a mathematical equation, or transcribe a code in order to log in, unless there is an alternative.
The intent is sound, and it matters enormously to people with learning disabilities. But it is overdue, and I am sceptical about how well it is being followed. Plenty of sites still gate entry behind exactly what this criterion exists to prevent. Identify the traffic lights. Slide the jigsaw piece until it fits. Retype the six digits before they expire. Those are cognitive function tests with a security label attached.
Level AAA: Nice to have
These three are stricter versions of criteria already covered above. AAA is not the target for most organisations, and W3C does not recommend it as a general policy requirement, so treat these as worth knowing rather than worth chasing.
7. 2.4.12 Focus Not Obscured (Enhanced)
The stricter sibling of number three. At AA the focused element must not be entirely hidden. At AAA no part of it may be hidden at all.
If you fix its AA cousin properly rather than minimally, you will usually clear this one without trying.
Sets an actual size and contrast floor for the focus indicator: at least the area of a 2 CSS pixel thick perimeter around the component, and at least 3:1 contrast between the focused and unfocused states.
Let’s be honest, if you’re changing the focus appearance, you might as well make it the correct size and contrast. It’s not a massive leap to achieve a AAA for this.
9. 3.3.9 Accessible Authentication (Enhanced)
The stricter sibling of number six. AA allows object recognition and personal content as authentication tests. AAA removes those exceptions too, so identifying the bicycles is out at this level.
Fix it once
WCAG 2.2 is coming, even if nothing is demanding it of you today. This makes the timing question quite simple.
Most organisations are already working on accessibility. Contrast, labels, alt text, focus states, form structure. That work is happening anyway, on a normal release cycle, against 2.1.
If a developer is already in the code adjusting a button, checking its target size costs almost nothing.
If a form is being rebuilt to fix labelling, handling redundant entry at the same time is a small addition rather than a separate piece of work.
If focus states are being sorted out, checking they are not obscured is a small addition.
The expensive version is doing all of that against 2.1 now, then coming back in eighteen months and doing a second pass because 2.2 has become the expected baseline.
9 criteria is not much extra work when it rides along with work you are already doing. It is a project of its own if you leave it until you are told to.
Are you legally required to meet it?
That depends entirely on where you operate and what kind of organisation you are, and it is a genuinely different question from the technical one.
UK public sector bodies, private businesses trading in the UK, and anyone selling into the EU all sit under different rules with different scopes, and each have different deadlines. Some name a WCAG version directly. Some do not name one at all and simply expect your service to be usable.
We have written the detail up in is WCAG required by law. If you’re unsure about where you stand, we also have a nifty accessibility quiz that sheds some light on what is required for your business, and it takes less than a minute.
Where to start
If you are at 2.1 and working to 2.2, you are 9 criteria away, not a rebuild away.
Start with focus. It is the one most likely to be broken; it costs nothing to check, and the tab test above will tell you within a minute whether you have a problem. Then look at target sizes on mobile, because that is usually the next thing to go.
For the full picture of how the versions and conformance levels fit together, we have a plain-English walkthrough of the WCAG standards.
If you would rather have a person go through yours properly, get in touch!