Why we target WCAG 2.2 AA as a technical baseline
The Access Shift team · · 4 min read
WCAG 2.2 AA is a superset of the web-content technical requirements referenced by the ADA, Section 508, the EAA, AODA, and ACA. Measuring against it gives you one strong baseline that maps to several laws.
Accessibility law is a patchwork. Different regions reference different versions of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, and the dates keep moving. Rather than chase each one separately, we measure against WCAG 2.2 Level AA — the most current standard — as our technical baseline.
One baseline, several frameworks
WCAG 2.2 AA is a superset of the web-content technical requirements in the major laws our customers care about. Targeting it helps you work toward the criteria referenced by the ADA, Section 508, the European Accessibility Act (via EN 301 549), Ontario's AODA, and the Accessible Canada Act — without maintaining five separate checklists.
It is worth being precise about what that means: WCAG 2.2 AA is a strong technical baseline, not a legal certification. Several of these laws reach beyond web content — EN 301 549, for example, covers hardware and non-web software in its other chapters. Conformance with the web-content criteria is necessary, but it is not the whole picture.
How customers can verify coverage
Pages running our widget expose the frameworks they address so monitoring tools can detect them, and our scanner reports against the same WCAG 2.2 AA criteria. We pair that automation with the standing recommendation to commission periodic human audits, because no automated baseline replaces testing with real assistive-technology users.
Frequently asked questions
- Does meeting WCAG 2.2 AA make my site ADA compliant?
- Not by itself. WCAG 2.2 AA is the technical baseline U.S. courts and the DOJ generally point to, but legal compliance is determined by regulators and courts, not by a tool or a checklist. Meeting the web-content criteria is necessary but not a guarantee of legal compliance.
- Why target WCAG 2.2 AA instead of 2.0 or 2.1?
- WCAG 2.2 (published by the W3C in October 2023) is backward compatible: it includes everything in 2.0 and 2.1 AA plus newer success criteria such as target size and accessible authentication. Targeting the latest AA level keeps you aligned with the older versions that current laws cite while preparing for upcoming revisions.