Delivering WCAG website compliance to 2.2 AA standards
Improving accessibility on the web is a core value and aim of ours at Splitpixel. Established practices and design trends can leave users with specific needs out in the cold, unable to navigate a website as easily as others. A website can contain major barriers to a person with sight, hearing, or mobility impairments, for example.
We think everyone should have a parity of experience when using our websites. That’s why we work to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) to deliver certain standards that ensure a website is perceiable, operable, understandable and robust. The current working version of WCAG is 2.2 – within that we work to the AA level across the board.
For arts, culture and non-profit clients, accessibility helps to welcome audiences of all abilities and needs. For health and social care clients, accessibility is essential for service-user wellbeing. But accessible web design benefits all users, regardless of sector. It’s simply best practice!
We can develop WCAG website compliance through bespoke web design projects, digital auditing, and consultancy. Whether you want to improve the accessibility of your existing website or commission a new, accessible WCAG 2.2 AA compliant website design and build, we can help.
What are Web Content Accessibility Guidelines?
and what does website WCAG 2.2 AA and AAA mean?
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines standards provide a structure and aim for accessible web design principles.
The 2.2 number refers to the version of the guidance published – version 3 is on the way!
But whatever the version, there are three levels of website accessibility – A, AA and AAA.
A is a good standard, AA is a great standard, and AAA is an exceptional standard. Each layer comes with additional requirements for design, development and content.
Achieving AAA WCAG websites is often out of reach for many organisations – the scale of development and ongoing commitment to multiple content versions is too much for those who don’t work solely, directly, with and for disabled users.
Instead, we focus on delivering AA website WCAG standards as a baseline. We then go beyond this to meet AAA design standards where possible, and work to address specific accessibility requirements to AAA standards if required based on user feedback.
Many organisations aim for WCAG 2.2 AA, with some public sector organisations legally obliged to this standard, as this provides the best practical balance between user accessibility and design flexibility.
The difference between AA and AAA accessibility involves the addition of features such as sign-language translations and audio descriptions for all video content.
We have taken great care to approach website WCAG accessibility in a way that complements both design and SEO needs – for example, ensuring that H-tag usage for screen readers does not interfere with H-tag usage for copy optimisation (and vice versa), as well as providing complete flexibility over design and layout without impacting either.
Accessible website projects from Splitpixel
City of London Sinfonia
Taking a bright neon brand and developing a harmonious, accessible identity, complete with website WCAG AA accessibility.
The Cabot
With slightly different standards in the US under ADA accessibility guidelines, we had to make sure our accessible website for The Cabot in Beverly, MA ticked all the right boxes.
Arts Fundraising and Philanthropy
A WCAG 2.2 AA Accessible website design and development complete with training courses and an online magazine – all incredibly easy for every user to navigate.
“At the beginning of the process, we had a clear vision for our new website, but were slightly daunted. With Splitpixel’s help it was not daunting at all. The integration with Spektrix was seamless and the support we received was outstanding. WordPress is easy to use and very flexible. Ultimately, we have a website that reflects Harrogate Theatre: is open, accessible and welcoming. Exactly what we set out to achieve.”
Kerry Maddison, Head of Sales
Harrogate Theatre
WCAG Website FAQs
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WCAG AA compliance for design centres around making sure websites are clear and legible. Fonts need to be readable, text sizes need to be adequate, colour contrasts need to meet certain ratios to avoid clashing or becoming illegible to colourblind users, and layouts need to break down and behave properly should a user zoom or magnify. For development, websites need to be built in a way that allows for navigation and use with assistive technologies, such as screen readers, or even as simple as tabbing on a keyboard. You typically need a specialist designer and developer to achieve these standards – many websites still fall short!
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WCAG AA level is seen as industry standard best practice, and is a legal requirement for many organisations depending on their links to government, where their funding comes from, or whether or not they trade in the EU. AAA level mostly works on the same principles, just with stricter requirements – for example, AA contrast ratios must be 4.5:1 whereas AAA ratios must be 7:1. AAA requires much more content work, with alternative provision of all content in audio and visual formats, etc.
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WCAG stands for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. They’re a set of standards set out by the Web Accessibility Initiative for ensuring websites are perceivable, operable, understandable and robust for all users.
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Responsive web design refers to designs and builds that can seamlessly transform to provide parity of experience across all devices, browsers, screen sizes, etc.
When accessibility is added into the mix, extra attention needs to be paid to other factors of responsive web design , such as zooming in within a browser. Typically, developers may see excessive zooms as edge cases that don’t need to be catered to – WCAG requirements understand that some visually impaired users may zoom in to 200% or more to make text more readable. A website needs to work when that happens!
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There are automated auditing tools, such as WAVE, that will flag up key accessibility errors, but they can’t find them all – truly measuring accessibility means extensive testing and checking to ensure standards have been applied correctly. There’s no quick fix. A full WCAG website accessibility audit uses automated tools to check code, but also a manual check of content, interactions, etc.
Let’s work together
We love working on accessible website design and development projects with businesses and organisations across Yorkshire – from our head office in Huddersfield, to the de facto West Yorkshire capital Leeds, as well as Bradford, Harrogate, Halifax, Doncaster, Wakefield and beyond.
If you want website design and development services from a small WCAG 2.2 AA web agency that understands your location, community and the need for better accessibility in web, all while putting Yorkshire values of integrity, hard work and honest pricing at the heart of what they do, we want to hear from you! So why not contact us today?
Contact us