{"id":1734,"date":"2024-08-24T19:47:00","date_gmt":"2024-08-24T18:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cerovac.com\/a11y\/?p=1734"},"modified":"2024-08-26T14:52:24","modified_gmt":"2024-08-26T13:52:24","slug":"why-is-reaching-wcag-level-aaa-not-recommended","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cerovac.com\/a11y\/2024\/08\/why-is-reaching-wcag-level-aaa-not-recommended\/","title":{"rendered":"Why is reaching WCAG level AAA not recommended?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Reading <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/w3c\/wcag\/issues\/3889\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/github.com\/w3c\/wcag\/issues\/3889\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">discussions about WCAG A and AA (opens in new window)<\/a> 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&#8217;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&#8217;t use A and AA directly as an indication to set priority or if bug was easy to fix. Because it&#8217;s not so simple when we consider different groups of people with different disabilities and combinations of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Surely we should have a clear distinction about differences between A and AA for the sake of the standard, but practically it&#8217;s not so important, as it can be very subjective. But the recommendation about why level AAA is not always recommended &#8211; that&#8217;s a different story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I am <a href=\"https:\/\/cerovac.com\/a11y\/2023\/12\/i-wish-parts-of-wcag-aaa-would-become-aa\/\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"1459\">totally for implementing parts of WCAG AAA<\/a>, 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&#8217;t even conform to levels A and AA).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Conforming to level AAA is not possible for all content<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>WCAG defines the following:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>So &#8211; yes, while parts of AAA can be reached quite easily, there are parts that can&#8217;t be reached for all types of web pages and web applications. And that&#8217;s why whole AAA will probably never be required as a baseline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But, as mentioned, some countries already require parts of AAA by default, like for example <a href=\"https:\/\/pisrs.si\/pregledPredpisa?sop=2018-01-1351\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Slovenian legislation for public sector requires sign language for procedures (in Slovenian, opens in new window)<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I hope that with the increased focus on the benefits of accessibility and <a href=\"https:\/\/cerovac.com\/a11y\/2024\/08\/design-for-all-standard-en-171612019-at-the-core-of-european-accessibility-act\/\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"1701\">Design for All<\/a>, more and more organizations will recognize WCAG AAA as a possibility and not just thinking (&#8220;AAA is not required and we will not pursuit it&#8221;).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Don&#8217;t get too concerned about the differences between WCAG on levels A and AA and instead use the energy to go beyond and implement AAA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,564],"tags":[773,764,765,80,283,29,774,684],"class_list":["post-1734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-laws-and-regulations","category-promoting-accessibility","tag-aaa","tag-design-for-all","tag-en17161","tag-en-301-549","tag-slovenia","tag-wcag","tag-wcag-1-2-6","tag-wcag-aaa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cerovac.com\/a11y\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cerovac.com\/a11y\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cerovac.com\/a11y\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cerovac.com\/a11y\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cerovac.com\/a11y\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cerovac.com\/a11y\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1734\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cerovac.com\/a11y\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cerovac.com\/a11y\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cerovac.com\/a11y\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}