Understanding Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)


The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) is the prevailing authority on accessibility standards. It is developed in collaboration with individuals and organizations globally with the goal of creating a universally accepted guideline for technical standards for web accessibility.

5 things to know about WCAG

  1. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines were created by a group called the W3C. It is one of several guidelines, that outlines what are the requirements for making the web accessible. There are other guidelines for making browsers/browser extensions accessible, content creation tools like WordPress accessible, as well specifications for accessible audio and video to name a few examples. WCAG is one piece of a larger puzzle.
  2. WCAG is divided into 4 Principles (which you can think of as categories):
    • Perceivable: Users must be able to perceive the information being presented (it can't be invisible to all of their senses).
    • Operable: Users must be able to operate the interface (the interface cannot require interaction that a user cannot perform).
    • Understandable: Users must be able to understand the information as well as the operation of the user interface (the content or operation cannot be beyond their understanding).
    • Robust: Users must be able to access the content as technologies advance (as technologies and user agents evolve, the content should remain accessible).
  3. Within those Principles there are guidelines and conformance standards. For example we can imagine a deaf or hard of hearing individual who needs to listen to a recorded lecture. In order to meet the principle of being perceivable, there must be an alternate means of the user getting that information. In this case the conformance standard tell us we need to provide a text alternative like captions or a transcript.
  4. WCAG uses a good, better, best model meaning that each of those standards are given a grade. In order to conform to the better standards (also known as AA), you need to conform to all the standards graded under good (level A) as well as all those graded as better (level AA). 
  5. WCAG is constantly evolving. As the internet and the tools we use evolve, so must the guidelines. Often you'll hear a version number, i.e WCAG 2.0, to indicate which version your company has adopted as their standards.

See our minimum digital accessibility standards to learn more about what version of WCAG Rutgers has adopted.

To learn more about WCAG, check out these sites: