The name “Web Content Accessibility Guidelines” (WCAG) has always been a source of misunderstanding and contention. “Guidelines” implies that this document only guides you, gives you hints on how to make web content accessible.

But that is only half of WCAG. The other half are “Guardrails” that prevent you from producing wholly inaccessible material.

Guidelines

The guidelines consist mostly of the Principles and Guidelines (oh!) of WCAG. There are four Principles that have in summary 13 Guidelines. Those are the first two numbers of the Success Criterion number (which are, spoilers, the Guardrails): 1.1.1 Non-Text Content refers to Principle 1, Guideline 1, Success Criterion 1.

As we often focus on Success Criteria, the context of the Principles and Guidelines is missed. They can guide us to good, accessible solutions already. When people say “go beyond WCAG” they typically mean “follow best practice principles & guidelines” which are also in WCAG.

Look at the excellent WCAG 2 at a Glance document by W3C/WAI, and you’ll notice that nothing limits you to making the most accessible decision at any point.

“Go beyond WCAG” is a mischaracterization of what WCAG is. What people mean is “stay away from the Guardrails in WCAG”.

Guardrails

If you think of guidelines in the real world, you probably think of the guiding lines that you see on streets and that keep traffic separated into different lanes. Generally, you follow them, but every so often, you cross them to overtake or to make a turn. That is OK. The lines are there to guide you.

On the other hand, you have guardrails that you want to stay away from. These are the absolute limits of what you can do without getting into an accident. If you are a careful driver, you should never be very near those guardrails.

That is what the Success Criteria in WCAG 2 are. They tell you where the street ends, and you crash into a barrier. That’s why it’s so important that these are specific. A text contrast is insufficient if you are below 4.5:1 contrast.

The guideline “Make it easier for users to see and hear content” has its guardrail at a minimum 4.5:1 contrast, allowing text to be scaled to at least 200%, and that content on hover and focus stays visible.

Conclusion

It’s a myth that WCAG constricts the level of accessibility. It’s quite the opposite. I sometimes think WCAG should be two standards: The guidelines that give web designers and developers information on what to look out for, and “testing rules” for verifying that the guidelines are followed.

Unfortunately, in practice, most people learn of the guideline part of WCAG only after being confronted with the guardrails part. The tragic situation is that people would crash into guardrails less if we taught them the Guidelines first.

As it is right now, we are only a tow truck that pulls the wreckage out from the guardrails and positions it just next to them. Which means that the projects keep scraping along, sparks flying, until they break down again.