First things first: Yes, WCAG (the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) are not easy to read. This is not the point that I try to make here. The point I hope to convey is that reading WCAG, and then proceeding to understanding it, is essential despite its difficulty.

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines consist of 6 important sections:

• Introduction
• 1. Perceivable
• 2. Operable
• 3. Understandable
• 4. Robust
• 5. Conformance

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I'm a web accessibility professional who cares deeply about inclusion and an open web for everyone. I work with Axess Lab as an accessibility specialist. Previously, I worked with Knowbility, the World Wide Web Consortium, and Aktion Mensch. In this blog I publish my own thoughts and research about the web industry.

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Introduction introduces the document, including the Layers of Guidance and the comparison to earlier guidelines. Handy! Then the four principles are listed, which itself contain the guidelines and success criteria. And chapter 5, Conformance, tells you how to actually determine – based on the success criteria – if a website meets the requirements of the WCAG guidelines. The whole document, including the table of contents, the glossary, and four pages of acknowledgements can be printed on just over 100 A4 pages. This is practically nothing. ¹

WCAG is so short because a lot of the success criteria are incredibly short and to the point. To do that, the editors used language that is precise or jargon where more information can be packed into a word. Luckily there is a glossary that explains most of the jargon quite well.

And then, when you need more specific information, there are Understanding pages for all success criteria and the conformance section where the information is explained with examples.

There are a few examples where the wording is easy to misunderstand ² , but in the grand scheme of things, reading and then learning what the different success criteria mean is essential.

In the last few years a few “easier to read” WCAG resources have popped up, and on inspection, they are all losing out on nuance, because if you add all that information back into the success criterion, all you have done is writing another Understanding document, and we already have those. And suddenly the “easy version” does not feel so easy anymore.

This is why I try to keep hard to the success criteria text when I explain WCAG criteria. I think it’s the best practice and the only way to do it. A good example on how much depth can be in a single criterion³ can be found in my article In detail: 1.4.11 Non-Text Contrast (User Interface Components). The conformance section is often overlooked because there is this very unhealthy focus on the Success Criteria. But where the SCs tell you how to test, Conformance tells you what to test, which is equally important.

I think saying “WCAG is difficult to read” and posing it as something which is optional, really makes people who work in this industry not want to read WCAG. It makes them almost hostile against it. And that means that misunderstandings are happening consistently. Let’s read WCAG and when you’ll struggle, here are good resources and people that help you understand.