WCAG AAA: What It Is, Who Has It, and Who Actually Needs It

If you’re running a business or you’re running the website for a business and the term “WCAG AAA compliance” doesn’t mean anything to you yet, it’s time to change that. The organization behind the term, the role it plays on a global scale, and the impact it has on your business (for better or worse) are too big to ignore. 

For most people in your shoes, once you’re savvy about what the WCAG ratings actually are, the next step is usually figuring out how to optimize your rating to get the biggest bang for your compliance bucks…and it might not be what you think. Let’s take a look.

WCAG Levels- A, AA, AAA

WCAG stands for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, which is a global standard used to promote and achieve uniform digital accessibility across the web. Digital accessibility is critical because it ensures that people with disabilities are able to fully access, navigate, and utilize the same online resources as everyone else. 

Do Businesses Have to Comply with WCAG?

This is an interesting question, and while the answer is technically no, in reality the question just needs to be rephrased. We suggest the right question to be asking at the moment isn’t, “Do I have to?” but rather, “Why should I?” In other words, what’s the benefit to you?

In the United States, web developers and brand advisors already have to prioritize digital accessibility through compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). This important legislation, which recognizes that ensuring access to physical spaces is a civil right, also applies to the online world. Failure to comply with ADA standards for your website can mean being subject to hefty regulatory fines and lawsuits (including defense costs and large payouts). 

WCAG is the global version of the ADA with respect to digital accessibility, specifically. While the WCAG standards are not currently enforceable, they are the gold-standard of digital accessibility, they’re already adopted by many nations, and they’re expected to be fully enforceable on a global scale in the not-too-distant future. 

Given that your business is already tasked with the responsibility of being ADA compliant, and the WCAG standard is rapidly moving toward becoming the norm, embracing WCAG compliance now is a sensible move.

What are the WCAG levels?

Unlike the ADA, which essentially assesses a business as compliant or not-compliant, the WCAG is assessed in tiers- A, AA, and AAA.

• A Level: This is the minimum standard for digital compliance. Meeting this standard is incredibly basic and should be achievable by most businesses and organizations quite easily. A Level looks like: 
  • Requiring websites to provide directions that don’t rely entirely on visual cues. For instance, it is not particularly helpful to direct someone with low or no vision to “click on the red button”. 
  • Providing textual descriptions for images and graphics. For instance, a blog article containing an image, should include “Alt-text” with a brief description of the image and a brief message about what it conveys.
  • Ensuring that basic assistive technologies can operate across the website. For instance, a screen reader should easily be able to identify an image and read the “Alt-text” aloud, so the consumer understands the engagement. 
• AA Level: There should be no surprise that AA is considered the middle of the road for WCAG compliance levels. It’s a step up from A, but not as fully realized as AAA. This level includes all of the A Level requirements plus:
  • Ensuring that the website’s color contrast is sufficient enough to be a useful visual tool for people with low vision. For instance, if the color of a background and the color of text are not easily distinguishable to the naked eye for someone who has low vision, they would not be able to read the text. While fairly simple to account for, failing to hit this mark can make a website fully unusable for some…which means fully inaccessible in any meaningful way.
  • Ordering the content in a way that is logical and uses formatting tools like heading and subheadings. This ensures that assistive technologies can easily make sense of the content and the navigation requirements.
  • Being consistent across the website as far as tools. Things like search fields, navigational menus, and buttons should all be consistently placed so they are easily tracked and reliable.
• AAA Level: This highest WCAG compliance level incorporates the essentials of the other two, plus:
  • Maintaining color contrast at a higher standard (7 to 1). 
  • Including American Sign Language (ASL) versions of all video content. 
  • Eliminating timed tasks. This can include things like not making a ticket purchase a timed task. Timing this task can cause users to get kicked out, have to start over, or miss out entirely, and people relying on assistive technologies made not be able to move as swiftly as these requirements demand.

Why most organizations aim for level AA

The truth is that as the global gold standard, AAA is a reach for most businesses. It’s a stretch. It’s the ultimate goal. But it’s not necessarily quite as easy for most small to medium businesses to achieve, nor is it necessarily required to enable most functionality.

Reasons AAA Might Not Be Immediately Achievable

1. Cost: It is, naturally, more costly to build the highest level of digital accessibility compliance into your platform, or to retroactively fit this type of compliance onto an already-established website.
2. Technical limitations: It might not be possible given a particular platform/software, etc. to achieve the highest WCAG standard.
3. Impact on design flexibility: Some designs may have outpaced our ability to problem solve for full accessibility while maintaining the desired design impact.
4. Low real-world demand: If you happen to run a website or online brand that simply does not have a meaningful real-world demand for accessibility among the population of users who are most in need of certain accessibility factors, then you may just not need it. 

None of these reasons is powerful enough to give up on the idea of achieving WCAG compliance, even at the AAA Level, but it points to a need for most businesses and organizations to achieve some level of balance for now. 

What AAA does not mean

In looking at WCAG Level AAA, trying to determine whether it is the right goal for your business or organization should include an understanding of what this level does not mean. 

First, achieving Level AAA does not mean that your business meets the current legal standard. On the contrary, the WCAG standard is not a legal requirement in most regions. So, it is not currently necessary in most places, including the United States, for any website to attain this gold-standard in digital accessibility.

Second, achieving Level AAA does not guarantee perfect usability. Yes, it is recognized as the highest standard at the moment, but our understanding of the nuance of digital accessibility is an ever-evolving one, just as technology, software, and online user engagement is an ever evolving experience. 

So, who truly needs WCAG Level AAA?

You might not be surprised to learn that only a select number of businesses and organizations truly need to prioritize AAA conformity. These include: Government and public-sector platforms in certain jurisdictions, services specifically targeted at people with severe disabilities, and highly specialized educational or public information services.

So, if you don’t fall into one of these three broad categories, shooting for WCAG AAA Level isn’t necessarily the right fit for right now. 

What Does It All Mean?

Why did we tell you how important digital accessibility and the WCAG standards are and then proceed to tell you not to worry about striving to attain the best version of that standard?

The reality is that sometimes conforming to WCAG Level AAA makes sense strategically (for businesses and organizations in certain sectors) and sometimes conforming to WCAG Level AA just makes more practical sense for most businesses.

The analysis looks something like this:

• ADA compliance is required in the United States, with increasing geographical scope and impact, and failure to maintain ADA compliance for digital accessibility can leave you vulnerable to fines and lawsuits
• So, for U.S.-based businesses and organizations operating a website, basic digital accessibility is the goal.
• WCAG standards are a global ideal, an aspirational blueprint for where we’re headed, but it hasn’t been locked down as the requirement on a large-scale yet. 
• Since U.S.-based businesses are already striving to meet ADA standards, incorporating a mid-level WCAG standard into your web design and development makes complete sense. There are a lot of cross-over and shared targets for conformance between these two.
• If a U.S.-based website meets the ADA standard and the WCAG AA Level standard for digital accessibility, it is ahead of the curve and poised for an easy adjustment once WCAG AAA Level becomes the legally required norm in the U.S. and elsewhere.
• Once ADA and AA compliance is achieved, businesses begin reaping the benefits of accessibility.

The Benefits of ADA and WCAG Level AA Conformance

The benefits of planning and running an accessible website include stronger SEO rankings, brand growth, broader reach, lucrative tax breaks, business-supporting investment, and closing the vulnerability gaps that invite costly lawsuits and burdensome regulatory fines.

Reach out to AllyADA today for answers to any of your questions about WCAG standards and more.