Website Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Explained

This guide is intended to make accessibility more accessible.

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) is a list of recommendations to address known challenges people with disabilities face on the internet. In other words, WCAG is meant to give organizations a series of concrete things they can do to implement the digital handrails necessary to ensure everybody has access to their online platforms, regardless of a user’s disability status. 

These protocols were first established in 1994 by the international World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). This nonprofit of software developers and member organizations regularly updates WCAG for the ever-changing digital landscape. Notably, WCAG 2.1 was published in 2018, with version 2.2 released in draft form in January 2023.

Designing your web properties according to WCAG helps ensure more than 61 million Americans and 1.3 billion people worldwide living with disabilities are able to fully participate in many fundamental aspects of society, much of which have shifted online. 

Organized by levels from A (lowest) to AAA (highest), businesses should aspire to be WCAG level AA-compliant to deliver an appropriate experience for all users. These shared standards are intended for content creators, web authoring tool developers, web accessibility evaluation tool developers, and website designers. They’re also meant to inform policymakers, managers, researchers, and others.

Principles of Accessibility

Each WCAG recommendation is informed by the four principles of accessibility: perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust. If one of your design features or content violates any of these, your digital property is not WCAG compliant.

Perceivable

Content and interface components must be presented in ways apprehensible or observable to all users. 

Operable

Users must be able to navigate your interface and interact with all its components. You shouldn’t design any elements disabled users won’t be able to use. 

Understandable

All information and operation of the interface must be comprehensible to all users. It shouldn’t be so complex that it becomes puzzling or unintelligible. 

Robust

Your content needs to be designed rigorously enough so that users can make sense of it regardless of the technological interpreters they use. It must be formatted for an expansive spectrum of assistive devices. 

In other words, interface components and content must be navigable and understandable for all users, and information must be sophisticated enough that it can be interpreted by a wide range of assistive technologies and screen readers. 

WCAG Doesn’t Have to Be Daunting

For many, the WCAG can be a bit technical and overwhelming—especially for less-initiated designers and content developers who don’t know where to start.

We understand that. 

While implementing something such as alt text seems pretty straightforward to many, coding so information displays appropriately for varied readers can become complicated, quickly.

You’re not alone, though.

This guide is intended to simplify each recommendation and suggest possible solutions. We hope it makes WCAG much more accessible so you can, in turn, make your websites more accessible. 

Notably, implementing accessible design is smart business sense. According to the nonprofit American Institutes for Research, people with disabilities in the United States of working age contribute more than $20 billion in discretionary income and $490 billion in disposable income. That’s a lot of potential revenue for your organization. 

Yes, there’s a clear business case for digital accessibility, but more importantly than that, it means large swaths of the population are no longer excluded from aspects of society many of us take for granted every day. 

By designing with WCAG in mind from the beginning, you not only ensure compliance with Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act, but demonstrate a commitment to the moral imperative we each have to make daily life accessible for all people. 

HubSpot

This guide is written specifically for the HubSpot CMS. However, the explanations here may be adapted or interpreted for other content management systems, but please do so with caution.

For general questions on our accessibility efforts or services, please contact us here. 

For questions on how to resolve specific success criteria, please comment on the individual articles.