WCAG in Practice

Conformance levels

What WCAG 2.2 added

• 2.4.11 Focus Not Obscured, so sticky headers cannot hide the focused element.
• 2.4.13 Focus Appearance, setting size and contrast requirements for the focus indicator.
• 2.5.7 Dragging Movements, requiring a single-pointer alternative to any drag operation.
• 2.5.8 Target Size (Minimum), 24 by 24 CSS pixels with spacing exceptions.
• 3.2.6 Consistent Help, keeping help mechanisms in the same relative place.
• 3.3.7 Redundant Entry, not asking for the same information twice in one process.
• 3.3.8 Accessible Authentication, not requiring a cognitive test such as transcribing a code.

Starting on a product that was never tested

In this order, because each pass finds a different class of problem and the early ones are the cheapest.

1. 1

   Pick the journeys that matter

   Sign in, the core task, checkout or submission, and support. Conformance is measured page by page, but nobody experiences a product that way.

2. 2

   Run an automated scan

   It finds missing names, contrast failures and broken structure in minutes. It detects roughly a third of issues, so treat a clean scan as the start rather than the result.

3. 3

   Do a keyboard pass

   One journey, no mouse. This finds the blocking failures, the ones that make a task impossible rather than unpleasant.

4. 4

   Do a screen reader pass

   The same journey, with one screen reader. Unnamed controls and silent state changes only show up here.

5. 5

   Rank by whether the task can be completed

   A trap that blocks checkout outranks a hundred contrast failures in a footer, whatever the criterion levels say.

6. 6

   Fix in the design system first

   One corrected component fixes every instance of it. Fixing page by page guarantees the problem returns with the next feature.