WCAG 2.2 - What You Need to Know

Looking up to a young black woman holding a phone with both hands. There's a skyscraper in the background on the right, and trees with smaller buildings in the left background.

Summary

The changes in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 from WCAG 2.1 are minimal.

We recommend reading this article, What's New in WCAG 2.2 from Tetra Logical, for in-depth details.

Highlights

Below we have highlighted Level A and Level AA updates only (there are also AAA additions, such as 2.4.12, 2.4.13, and 3.3.9).

Deprecated

  • 4.1.1 Parsing is deprecated due to HTML standard changes

Added

  • 2.4.11 Focus Not Obscured (minimum) (AA)
    • Too long; didn't read (TL;DR) : when an element receives focus it should not be partially covered by another element (i.e. a link being covered by a sticky header).
  • 2.5.7 Dragging Movements (AA)
    • TL;DR: dragging functionality can also be achieved with mouse/touch without dragging.
  • 2.5.8 Target Size (minimum) (AA)
    • TL;DR: the size of a target (clickable element, basically) is at least 24 by 24 CSS pixels. There are exceptions, but this is the gist of the update.
  • 3.2.6 Consistent Help (A)
    • TL;DR: Human contact info, Human contact mechanism (webform), Self-help option, Automated contact mechanism, etc. always appear in the same relative order/position when shown on multiple web pages.
  • 3.3.7 Redundant Entry (A)
    • TL;DR: if a user needs to enter information that they've previously entered it's either auto-populated or available for them to select unless re-entering is essential, the info is required to ensure security, or the previously entered info is invalid.
  • 3.3.8 Accessible Authentication (minimum) (AA)
    • TL;DR: a cognitive function test (remembering a password or solving a puzzle) is not required for any step in an authentication process unless that step provides one of:
      • Alternative: another authentication method that doesn't rely on a cognitive test
      • Mechanism: something is made available to assist the user in completing the test
      • Object recognition: the test is to recognize objects
      • Personal content: the test is to identify non-text content the user provided to the site