What is WCAG, and does your website need it?

WCAG — the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines — is the international technical standard for making websites usable by people with disabilities. No statute names it as binding on a private business's site, yet it is the yardstick every serious accessibility conversation is measured against, including the Justice Department's. So the practical answer is yes: not because a law quotes it at you, but because it is the only agreed definition of what 'accessible' means.

The details

The standard comes from the W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative and is published as a family (WCAG 2.0, 2.1, 2.2 are the current family): WCAG 2.0, 2.1 and 2.2, with WCAG 3 still in draft. Each version adds to the last rather than replacing it, and each success criterion is graded A, AA or AAA. Level AA is the one people mean when they say 'compliant'; it is the level government rules adopt and the level a sensible small business targets.

Why it matters to a private business: the Justice Department's stated position is that the ADA applies to websites of public-facing businesses, with Title III covering businesses open to the public, a view it has held since 1996. Its 2022 guidance also says plainly that it has no regulation setting detailed technical standards for private businesses, and it points them to WCAG and Section 508 as helpful references. The obligation is the ADA's; WCAG is how you show you have met it.

Governments now have the standard in black and white. The April 2024 Title II rule set WCAG 2.1 Level AA for state and local government web content and mobile apps — the first explicit federal web accessibility standard adopted under the ADA. If your business builds or supplies content for a town or county, that version and level are what your work will be judged against.

The rule in WCAG that surprises owners most is structural: WCAG conformance is full-page. You cannot declare the homepage conformant while the booking widget is not, and a responsive site must conform at every screen width it presents, not just on a desktop monitor. That single requirement is why accessibility is decided in the templates, not added page by page afterwards.

What it looks like in practice is less exotic than the name suggests: sufficient colour contrast, images with meaningful text alternatives, captions on video, forms with labels and clear error messages, and everything reachable with a keyboard. Most of it is simply careful building.

Target WCAG 2.1 or 2.2 at Level AA, build it into the templates, and test by hand as well as by tool. That is what the standard asks, and it is what the Justice Department points to when it is asked what accessible means.