Reading discussions about WCAG A and AA (opens in new window) made me think more about AAA than AA and A. Because I never really saw the difference between A and AA levels as an important discussion. People with disabilities don’t care much if a barrier is A or AA and legislation basically always require both A and AA (some countries also make parts of AAA required). In my audits, I didn’t use A and AA directly as an indication to set priority or if bug was easy to fix. Because it’s not so simple when we consider different groups of people with different disabilities and combinations of them.
Surely we should have a clear distinction about differences between A and AA for the sake of the standard, but practically it’s not so important, as it can be very subjective. But the recommendation about why level AAA is not always recommended – that’s a different story.
I am totally for implementing parts of WCAG AAA, even for general purpose websites and web applications. I would even argue that legislation is too permissive and that more AAA ought to be required, but that will remain just a wish when we consider current state of accessibility maturity of most of organizations (that can’t even conform to levels A and AA).
Conforming to level AAA is not possible for all content
WCAG defines the following:
It is not recommended that Level AAA conformance be required as a general policy for entire sites because it is not possible to satisfy all Level AAA Success Criteria for some content.
So – yes, while parts of AAA can be reached quite easily, there are parts that can’t be reached for all types of web pages and web applications. And that’s why whole AAA will probably never be required as a baseline.
But, as mentioned, some countries already require parts of AAA by default, like for example Slovenian legislation for public sector requires sign language for procedures (in Slovenian, opens in new window).
And I hope that with the increased focus on the benefits of accessibility and Design for All, more and more organizations will recognize WCAG AAA as a possibility and not just thinking (“AAA is not required and we will not pursuit it”).
