Technical Questions About WCAG and Accessibility
The technical implementation of accessibility regularly raises questions: what exactly are the WCAG? How is testing done? And are automated tools sufficient? The following questions address the technical aspects of accessible web development.
- What are the WCAG and which version applies? The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are the internationally authoritative standard for accessible web content, published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). They…
- What does WCAG 2.2 AA conformance mean? WCAG defines success criteria at three conformance levels: A (basic), AA (the recommended standard) and AAA (the highest level, often not achievable for all content). Conformance…
- Are automated accessibility tools sufficient? No. Automated testing is an important building block, but not a complete proof. Tools like axe-core or Lighthouse detect, depending on the source, only around 30 to 50 percent of…
- What is the difference between ARIA and semantic HTML? Semantic HTML conveys meaning directly through native elements: a button is a button to the screen reader, a nav is navigation, an h2 is a second-level heading. These elements…
- Does accessibility work with JavaScript frameworks? Yes, React, Vue, Angular and Svelte are fully compatible with accessible development. A framework is neither an obstacle nor an automatic solution, what matters is the…
- What are accessibility overlays and why don't they work? Accessibility overlays are JavaScript widgets embedded via a code snippet that promise to make a website accessible automatically and retroactively, often combined with a control…