WCAG 2.2, explained.
Almost every accessibility law points at the same technical standard. Understanding its shape makes the rest of this much less mysterious.
Four principles
Three levels
Level A is the floor. Failing it usually means someone simply cannot use a feature at all.
Level AA is what essentially every regulation points at, including the ADA Title II rule and the European Accessibility Act. When someone says “WCAG” without qualification, they mean AA.
Level AAA is an aspiration for specific content, not a realistic target for a whole site. The W3C itself says conformance at AAA is not required as a general policy.
2.2 added nine criteria to 2.1, mostly around focus visibility, dragging alternatives, target size, and not making people remember or re-enter information.
What a tool can and cannot check
Automated testing reliably detects roughly 30–40% of WCAG success criteria. It is excellent at contrast ratios, missing form labels, empty buttons and invalid ARIA.
It cannot tell you whether alt text describes the image, whether focus order matches the visual order, whether an error message explains how to recover, or whether a heading structure reflects the actual structure of the page. Those need a person.
Anyone selling you conformance on the strength of a scan is selling you the easy 30%.
This page explains our understanding of the landscape as of August 2026. It is general information about the standards we test against — it is not legal advice, and we are not lawyers. For your own obligations, talk to one.
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