Accessibility work usually arrives as a demand from somewhere else: a complaint, a client questionnaire, a procurement form with a box that says WCAG 2.1 AA. It rarely arrives with an explanation of what the standard actually asks for.
Here is the short version, and what changes on a normal business website.
The version question matters less than it looks
WCAG 2.2 became the W3C standard on 5 October 2023 and supersedes 2.1. But 2.1 is still the version written into law, including the Department of Justice rule for public agencies.
That sounds like a conflict. It is not, because 2.2 is backwards compatible. Every A and AA criterion from 2.1 carries into 2.2, with one exception: 4.1.1 Parsing was removed as obsolete, because browsers and assistive technology now handle malformed markup on their own. Nothing needs doing about that removal.
So build to 2.2 AA. It satisfies 2.1 AA automatically, and there is no compliance downside to being a version ahead.
WCAG 3.0 is still a working draft. Candidate Recommendation is not projected before late 2027, and it is expected to sit alongside 2.2 rather than replace it. Do not plan around it.
If you already meet 2.1, only six criteria are new
WCAG 2.2 added nine success criteria. Three are Level AAA, which almost nobody is asked for. That leaves six that matter:
- 2.4.11 Focus Not Obscured (AA). When someone tabs to an element, it must not be completely hidden behind something you put on the page.
- 2.5.7 Dragging Movements (AA). Anything you can do by dragging needs a way to do it with a single tap or click.
- 2.5.8 Target Size (AA). Targets at least 24 by 24 CSS pixels, or spaced far enough apart that a 24 pixel circle on one does not touch the next.
- 3.3.8 Accessible Authentication (AA). No log-in step that requires memorising, transcribing or solving a puzzle, unless there is another way through.
- 3.2.6 Consistent Help (A). If you offer help, it appears in the same relative place on every page.
- 3.3.7 Redundant Entry (A). Do not ask for the same information twice in one process.
Read those again and notice how ordinary they are. None of them is about screen readers specifically. They are about not making people do unnecessary work.
The new criterion almost everyone fails is 2.4.11
Focus Not Obscured is the most commonly failed of the criteria added in 2.2, and the cause is nearly always the same: a sticky header or a cookie banner sitting over the field a keyboard user has just tabbed to.
The field has focus. The browser has scrolled it into view. The sticky bar is covering it. The person cannot see where they are typing.
You can test it in a minute. Open a long form on your own site, put the mouse away, and press Tab repeatedly to the bottom. Watch whether the focused field ever disappears under the header. If your cookie notice is still showing, leave it there, because that is what a first-time visitor sees.
Four checks you can run on your own site today
- Keyboard only. Tab through a page. Every link and button should be reachable, the focus outline should always be visible, and the order should match what you see on screen.
- Zoom to 200 percent. Nothing should be cut off, and nothing should force you to scroll sideways.
- Turn on reduced motion in your operating system settings. Animations and hover effects should stop.
- Check one form. Every field needs a real label, not just grey placeholder text that vanishes when you start typing.
None of these needs a tool or a budget. They will find more than a scanner does, which is the subject of a separate article.
Where this sits on a real project
Accessibility is cheapest when it is part of the build. Contrast, focus styles, target sizes and heading structure are decisions made once in a design system and inherited by every page after that. Retrofitting the same things across two hundred existing pages is a different job with a different price.
If you are commissioning a new site, ask for 2.2 AA in writing and ask how it will be verified. If you already have a site, start with the four checks above and see what turns up.
Sources: W3C, What’s New in WCAG 2.2 and the WCAG 2.2 Recommendation.