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The Definitive Website Accessibility Checklist

Easy To Use Web Accessibility Checklist

This in-depth digital compliance checklist is your definitive guide to understanding and applying website accessibility standards to ensure your website is fully compliant.

What's Inside

  • Guidance on how to provide text alternatives
  • Tips to make information and structure available to all
  • Everything you need to know about accessible color use
  • Checkpoints for keyboard and alternative input methods
  • Must-know information about forms, links, and labels
  •  And so much more!

WCAG 2.1 offers the best way to achieve digital accessibility and compliance

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (commonly referred to as WCAG) have been recognized as the gold standard in accessibility for over 20 years. In fact, WCAG 1.0 was published all the way back in 1999, a time when the web looked and worked very differently than it does today.

WCAG outlines specific technical standards to make websites and other digital content accessible to people with disabilities. Published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), WCAG has been updated over the years to account for the evolution of web-based digital technology.

Today, WCAG 2.1 is globally accepted as the best standard by which to measure accessibility. Published in 2018, WCAG 2.1 introduced a higher level of focus and understanding for improving accessibility on mobile devices, as well as for people with low vision and cognitive disabilities.

A comprehensive accessibility testing strategy should be based on WCAG 2.1 A/AA success criteria.

Understanding WCAG 2.1 conformance levels

WCAG sets three ascending levels of conformance: A, AA, and AAA. We strongly recommend that organizations maintain their websites and apps to conform with all success criteria required for Level A and AA, sometimes written as A/AA.

Level A success criteria include some of the most important accessibility checkpoints, but Level A is not enough. Conforming only with Level A would leave many critical accessibility barriers unaccounted for, rendering the website unusable and inaccessible for millions of people. Level AAA success criteria, on the other hand, include a number of aspirational accessibility checkpoints that are difficult or impossible to always achieve. In fact, the W3C recommends against defining Level AAA as a target level of conformance, stating that “it is not possible to satisfy all Level AAA Success Criteria for some content.”

WCAG 2.1 A/AA conformance is most common, ensuring accessible and sustainable web content.

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