About WCAG
Compliance Requirements
Contents
Selecting a Level of Conformance
Each level of accessibility can represent goals with which organizations and websites should aim to conform. Depending on the website — whether it’s a site being retrofitted to improve its state of accessibility or if it’s a new website being developed — the conformance goal may vary.
As you’ll recall, Level A allows most people to access the content of a website. While Level A conformance is an honourable accomplishment, it is generally considered “minimal conformance.” If you are working with a limited budget (or no budget) this may be an acceptable level of accessibility. However, as mentioned earlier, it is generally accepted that most sites should strive for Level AA and, perhaps, should conform with a few of the Level AAA success criteria (defined below).
If you are working on a new website, Level AA should be the goal from the start. If you are working with an existing site that is receiving an accessibility retrofit, then you may want to first aim for Level A, then with time resolve all Level AA issues. Generally, it is less costly to build a site to be accessible from the start than it is to build a site and retrofit it later to conform.
Level AAA conformance is unattainable for many websites. While it is possible to conform with some of the requirements at this level, they can often be counterproductive or unnecessary. Take for instance the reading level requirement (WCAG 2.0, SC 3.1.5). Public organizations will want to meet this guideline, reducing the reading level required to understand their website’s content and thereby reaching the broadest audience possible. But for other sites that focus on a particular or highly educated audience, it may be impossible or even inadvisable to comply with this requirement. Imagine an advanced book in biomechanics written at the lower secondary school reading level required to satisfy this guideline. If it were possible, replacing the advanced terminology and jargon with low-level paraphrasing would likely make the content unusable by the intended audience.
Other Conformance Considerations
In addition to meeting all the Level A, AA, or AAA requirements, there are other conformance requirements to consider before being able to claim conformance at one of these levels:
- Full pages: Conformance applies to full web pages only. It cannot apply to parts of pages.
- Complete processes: When a conformance claim is being made on a collection of pages that make up a web application, for instance, all pages in the collection must conform. If one were to claim “the discussion forum conforms at Level AA,” then all aspects of the forum must conform — logging in, reading posts, posting new messages, and so on.
- Accessibility supported: Techniques to implement accessibility requirements are done in a way that is supported by assistive technologies. For example, there is a linked image, which when clicked, opens a feature. The linked i