Glossary.
The terms that turn up in our reports and in your procurement paperwork, in plain English and without the circular definitions.
Accessibility statement
A published page describing what was tested on a site, when, by what method, what does not yet conform, and how to report a barrier. Expected under the European Accessibility Act and good practice everywhere else.
ACR
Accessibility Conformance Report. A completed VPAT — the actual document stating, criterion by criterion, what a product supports.
ARIA
Accessible Rich Internet Applications. A set of HTML attributes that describe roles, states and properties to assistive technology. Best used sparingly; native HTML elements are almost always better.
Assistive technology
Software or hardware someone uses to access a computer: screen readers, magnifiers, switch devices, voice control, braille displays.
axe-core
The open-source accessibility testing engine we use for automated scanning. It is deliberately conservative, reporting only what it can determine reliably.
Conformance
Meeting every applicable success criterion at a given WCAG level. A property of a page at a point in time, not a certificate anyone can issue.
Contrast ratio
The measured difference in relative luminance between two colours, from 1:1 to 21:1. WCAG AA asks for 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text and interface components.
EAA
European Accessibility Act. In force since 28 June 2025, covering products and services sold into the EU regardless of where the seller is based.
Focus indicator
The visible marker showing which element the keyboard is on. The most commonly removed accessibility feature on the web, and one of the cheapest to restore.
Landmark
A region of a page — banner, navigation, main, contentinfo — that lets assistive technology users jump straight to a section instead of reading through.
Level A / AA / AAA
WCAG conformance levels. A is the floor, AA is what essentially every regulation points at, AAA is an aspiration for specific content rather than a whole-site target.
Overlay
A third-party script that changes a site's appearance or behaviour at page load. It does not alter the underlying code and does not make a site conform.
Reflow
WCAG 1.4.10. Content must work at 320 CSS pixels wide without two-dimensional scrolling — roughly a phone, or a desktop at 400% zoom.
Remediation
Fixing accessibility issues in the source: markup, styles, components and content. Distinct from anything applied on top at runtime.
Screen reader
Software that converts on-screen content to speech or braille. NVDA and JAWS on Windows, VoiceOver on Apple platforms, TalkBack on Android.
Section 508
US federal law requiring agencies to make their technology accessible. Incorporates WCAG 2.0 AA, and reaches suppliers through procurement.
Success criterion
A single testable requirement in WCAG, numbered like 1.4.3. What our findings are tied to, so every issue points at something specific.
Template
A page type rather than a page. A store with 10,000 URLs usually has about a dozen. We test and price by template.
VPAT
Voluntary Product Accessibility Template. The blank form; filled in, it becomes an ACR.
WCAG
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. The technical standard nearly every accessibility law in the world points at. Current version 2.2.
Something here apply to you?
A free scan tells you which of these terms you are actually going to have to deal with.