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When “pass” and “grade” show up in the same document, it’s tempting to put them on one line: the passing mark is the lowest grade, and the grades climb from there. Most exams work that way. WCAG 3’s conformance and Bronze, Silver, and Gold are easy to read the same way. On October 16, I gave a talk, What the WCAG 3.0 Draft Asks of Evaluation Methods, at a meeting of the Digital Accessibility Standardization Forum’s service subcommittee. In the Q&A, someone asked: “What’s the difference between meeting conformance and Bronze, Silver, Gold? And what do you have to do to get them?” I couldn’t answer it well with only the materials I’d prepared, and I’ve regretted that since. So I went back to the WCAG 3 Working Draft published on September 10, 2026, with just that one question in mind. WCAG 3 is the standard W3C is building to succeed WCAG 2.2, and a Working Draft is one that isn’t final yet. ...

WCAG 3 September 2026 Working Draft explained: one conformance line, Bronze/Silver/Gold as reporting tiers, and 216 requirements counted by hand.

If you’ve ever run an accessibility checker, you’ve probably seen a line somewhere in the results like, “This result was verified on a specific browser and screen reader combination.” Every accessibility evaluation starts from some baseline environment. But what exactly counts as that “baseline environment” is something standards documents have rarely defined with any precision. The March 2026 Working Draft of WCAG 3 (3.0) puts a name to this gap — the accessibility-support set — and structures it into a formal clause (§3.2.2). The term itself existed in earlier drafts too; what this draft adds is splitting it into a default set and an alternative set, numbering the clause, and giving it a proper place within the conformance requirements. Read the definition closely, though, and you’ll find a line stating that the baseline is oriented toward English content. This post walks through exactly what that clause says, and what it means for local assistive technology environments like Sense Reader (센스리더), Korea’s dominant local screen reader. ...

“Once WCAG 3 ships, what happens to the KWCAG we’re following right now?” That’s the question I get most often since publishing our complete KWCAG 2.2 guide. “WCAG 3” has started coming up often enough in accessibility newsletters and conference talks that it’s only natural to wonder how KWCAG, our domestic standard, should respond to this shift. Short answer up front: the two standards are moving at different speeds right now, and there’s no need to relearn KWCAG anytime soon. That said, a fairly significant structural shift is on the horizon, so it’s worth knowing the general direction if you work in this space. This post walks through what’s different between the two standards and why that difference matters. ...

Where WCAG 3 (3.0) stands in the March 2026 W3C Working Draft: the 12-category, 44-guideline structure, requirement counts, and the return of Bronze/Silver/Gold.

Introduction This is the seventh post in the WCAG 3.0 series. The expanded scope post looked at how far WCAG 3.0 reaches “beyond the web.” This time, I want to answer a question a lot of people keep asking me. “Should we migrate to WCAG 3.0?” Short answer up front: not yet. But there’s an important nuance to that answer. “Conformance” and “improvement” are two different conversations. Source document: This post is based on the W3C Working Draft of March 3, 2026. Drafts are generally updated on a roughly six-month cycle, so details may have shifted by the time you’re reading this. ...

WCAG 3.0 Draft extends scope beyond web content to wearables, Web of Things, VR/AR, and the tooling ecosystem, and covers how South Korea's kiosk accessibility connects to that expansion.

WCAG 3.0 Assertions document accessibility procedures automated tests cannot verify. This post covers the 28 assertions in the March 2026 Draft and how they differ from WCAG 2.2's Conformance Claim.

Compare WCAG 3.0’s quantitative/qualitative testing flow with WCAG 2.2’s success-criteria model. We cover Atomic/Holistic concepts, view/process scope, and how tests connect to scoring from a practical perspective.

WCAG 3.0 restructures accessibility into Guidelines, Outcomes, and Methods. Covers the 153 requirements (Core 92 + Supplemental 61), Atomic vs. Holistic Tests, and a login-form example vs WCAG 2.2.