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“I’ve looked at WCAG 2.1, but what’s new in 2.2?” I get this question a lot doing frontend work. WCAG 2.2 became a W3C Recommendation on October 5, 2023, so it’s been nearly three years now. For reference, the document currently posted at w3.org/TR/WCAG22/ is a December 12, 2024 revised recommendation — the success criteria themselves haven’t changed, it’s just a republication with post-finalization corrections folded in. Yet plenty of teams are still running their checklists against 2.1. It’s not that they don’t know the new criteria exist — it’s more that “nine new ones, do we really have to look at all of them?” has kept it on the back burner. ...

↻ 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. ...

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. ...

“We’re certified, so we should be fine.” It’s an easy thing to believe on the side that builds the website. Yet even on sites with a certification mark, it’s common for a screen reader user to fail to find the log-in button, or a low-vision user to be unable to read gray text on gray. Having been audited once, and being usable right now, are two different stories. The tool I built to shrink that gap is A11y Check. Put in a URL and it audits the accessibility automatically, then hands back a report and a fix guide. This article covers what A11y Check does, how it works, and why I opened the code. Let’s start with where it came from. ...

Introduction “How hard can a signup form be?” If that thought has ever crossed your mind… you’ve probably never tested it for accessibility. Forms are the most important interface for user input on the web. Login, checkout, search, surveys — virtually every core web function goes through a form. Yet for countless people, these forms are a complete barrier. Screen reader users can’t tell what an input field is asking for Keyboard-only users get stuck in front of a date picker People with cognitive disabilities see an error message but have no idea how to fix it A web form with multiple input fields — easy to get lost in, just like people navigating a maze. Photo: Susan Q Yin / Unsplash In this post, we’ll go through form accessibility from top to bottom, based on WCAG 2.2. No dry theory — just practical code you can use right away, paired with a demo page I built for this post. ...

Introduction “We used red and green to distinguish them, so it should be fine.” It’s a thought that comes up naturally during development. But more people than you’d expect have difficulty telling those two colors apart. Statistics based on Northern European ancestry suggest that roughly 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women have red-green color vision deficiency. The exact ratio varies by region and genetic background, but the fact remains: there are always users who struggle to distinguish red from green. ...

↻ 2026-07-30 Updated Updated the basis document to the W3C Working Draft of March 3, 2026 — one draft newer than the version cited at publication time. Introduction This is the sixth post in the WCAG 3.0 series. This time I want to unpack what “beyond the web” actually means in practice. The earlier posts looked at structure, testing, and Assertions — now it’s time to get clear on “how far does the scope actually reach?” ...

Introduction Have you ever tried using the internet without a mouse? Most people take their mouse for granted. But there are many people who can’t use one. People with physical disabilities who can’t operate a mouse People with repetitive strain injuries like carpal tunnel syndrome People with temporary arm injuries Power users who simply find keyboards more efficient For these users, the question “Can I use this site with just a keyboard?” is crucial. ...

↻ 2026-07-30 Updated This post reflects the W3C Working Draft of March 3, 2026. Foundational was renamed to Core, so related wording has been corrected, and the Assertions count (28) and their role in level determination have been updated to match the current draft. Introduction In Atomic Tests vs. Holistic Tests: A New Testing Methodology, we discussed balancing Atomic and Holistic tests. Now we need to address how we’ll “assert” and “document” these results. This is where Assertions come in. ...

↻ 2026-07-30 Updated This post reflects the W3C Working Draft of March 3, 2026. It accounts for Foundational being renamed to Core, and the basis-document reference has been corrected to the current draft. Introduction When people hear “accessibility testing,” they often think of a checklist: “Does this button have alternative text?” “Is the contrast ratio high enough?” WCAG 2.2 is built around clear pass/fail checks like these. WCAG 3.0 moves toward a broader unit of evaluation, aiming to consider overall user experience quality. That shift naturally changes how we test. We now combine fine-grained checks (Atomic) with real-world contextual evaluation (Holistic). ...