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I put the same page into two checkers. One says “needs review.” The other says “fail.” If your team has used more than one automated accessibility checker, you’ve probably seen this. So which one is right? I decided to answer that with numbers. The 37 accessibility test rules that W3C has approved come with 558 approved examples, each one labeled with the correct answer: this HTML passes, this HTML fails. I ran them through axe-core and IBM Equal Access, one by one. Of the 430 cases both tools checked, 413 agreed on whether the example fails (407 if you count “cannot tell” as its own result). The 17 that split were mostly cases where one tool returned cannot tell, or where one tool failed code that ACT doesn’t consider a failure. ACT rules are the yardstick for this comparison. The format they’re written in, ACT Rules Format 1.1, became a W3C Recommendation, W3C’s name for an official web standard, in February 2026. ...

↻ 2026-09-25 Updated On September 25, 2026, W3C WAI’s Director published a W3C blog post explaining the reasoning behind this structural change, so I added a new subsection, “WCAG Is the Ruler, Laws Are the Rules”, to the “Why the Change” section. It also includes what I found when I checked where the sign language requirements sit in the September draft. How to read the draft and the conclusions of this post are unchanged. Introduction Standards documents change quietly. One morning an email titled “For Review” shows up in your inbox, and when you open the link, the document you read last time has a different structure. On September 10, 2026, the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) published a new WCAG 3 (3.0) Working Draft and sent out a call for review comments. ...

↻ 2026-09-10 Updated A new Working Draft was published on September 10, 2026, and it changes the premise of the “Bronze/Silver/Gold Are Back” section below. The September draft defines a single conformance line (all core requirements met) and moves Bronze/Silver/Gold out of conformance into reporting tiers. The requirement count also grew from 182 to 216. This post stays as a record of the March draft; the changes are covered in What Changed in the WCAG 3 September 2026 Draft. Introduction Search for “WCAG 3” and articles describing the 2021 draft still show up near the top — the era of scoring criteria and tallying them into a grade, a concept that has completely disappeared from the document by now. Web standard drafts change fairly often, and there’s less material out there keeping up with the pace than you’d expect. ...

↻ 2026-08-12 Updated Corrected the legal basis of Korea’s quality certification. With the Digital Inclusion Act taking effect on January 22, 2026, Article 47 of the Framework Act on Intelligent Informatization was repealed and the certification scheme moved to Articles 21–22 of the Digital Inclusion Act — this post had been citing the old provision. The body, FAQ, and comparison diagram are updated together. “Can we actually say our service is accessible?” ...

↻ 2026-09-10 Updated The Working Draft of September 10, 2026 changed the conformance model again. Bronze/Silver/Gold below are no longer conformance levels. The September draft sets a single conformance line (all core requirements met) and moves the levels into reporting tiers below and above conformance. Core requirements now carry severity tags (Physical harm, Risk, Barrier, Friction), and the conformance section moved from Exploratory to Developing. The body below still reflects the March draft; the new structure is covered in What Changed in the WCAG 3 September 2026 Draft. ↻ 2026-07-30 Updated ...

↻ 2026-07-30 Updated Numbers and terminology have been corrected to reflect the W3C Working Draft of March 3, 2026. The requirement count has been corrected from 170+ to 153 (Core 92 + Supplemental 61), and Foundational has been replaced with Core. The widely-circulated figure of “174” is not traceable to a source, so it has not been used here. Introduction “1.3.1 Info and Relationships - Level A” If you’ve worked with WCAG 2.2, you’re familiar with this format of Success Criteria. Numbers, levels, and clear test conditions. This structure has been the standard for web accessibility for over 15 years. ...

↻ 2026-07-30 Updated Refreshed the timeline: added the 3 March 2026 Working Draft milestone and revised the completion outlook against the working group’s schedule (CR snapshot targeted for Q4 2027). Introduction “Our site passed WCAG 2.1 AA 100%, but screen reader users still can’t sign up.” I keep thinking about this comment I heard at a conference last year. They passed accessibility audits, got the green badge, but users with disabilities still couldn’t use core features. This is the biggest dilemma facing WCAG 2.x today. ...