About WCAG Techniques
About WCAG
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) provides requirements for making websites, applications, and other digital content accessible to people with disabilities. For an introduction to WCAG, supporting technical documents, and educational material, see WCAG 2 Overview.
There are additional resources that help you understand and implement WCAG. These Techniques are one type of resource. Others are explained in the WCAG 2 Documents.
About Techniques
The techniques provide guidance for web content authors and evaluators on meeting WCAG success criteria. Techniques are examples of ways to meet WCAG.
Updated periodically
WCAG 2 itself is a stable document that does not change. The techniques for WCAG are updated periodically to cover more current best practices and changes in technologies and tools.
Techniques are not required
Techniques are informative—that means they are not required. The basis for determining conformance to WCAG 2 is the success criteria from the WCAG 2 standard—not the techniques.
W3C cautions against requiring W3C's sufficient techniques. The only thing that should be required is meeting the WCAG 2 success criteria. To learn more, see: What would be the negative consequences of allowing only W3C's published techniques to be used for conformance to WCAG 2? in the WCAG 2 FAQ
WCAG Quick Reference
Techniques for WCAG 2 is not intended to be used as a stand-alone document. Instead, it is expected that content authors will usually use How to Meet WCAG 2: A customizable quick reference to read the WCAG success criteria, and follow links from there to specific topics in Understanding WCAG 2 and to specific techniques.
Techniques for specific technologies
Publication of techniques for a specific technology does not imply that the technology can be used in all situations to create content that meets WCAG 2 success criteria and conformance requirements. Developers need to be aware of the limitations of specific technologies and provide content in a way that is accessible to people with disabilities.
Important Additional Information
For important information about techniques, please see the Understanding Techniques for WCAG Success Criteria section of Understanding WCAG 2.
Change Log
For a detailed view of recent changes to the informative documents see the GitHub updates.