Little Glossary · Web and conversion

Web accessibility (WCAG)

Web accessibility is the practice of designing and building websites that everyone can use, including people with visual, hearing, motor or cognitive disabilities. The W3C's WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) are the reference standard to measure it.

Updated October 5, 2026

What WCAG is

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines are published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The current version is WCAG 2.2, from October 2023. They are organized around four principles: content must be perceivable, operable, understandable and robust. Each criterion has a conformance level: A (minimum), AA (the one most laws and contracts require) and AAA (the strictest).

What the rules say in Europe and Spain

Directive (EU) 2019/882, known as the European Accessibility Act, has applied since 28 June 2025 to certain consumer-facing products and services, such as e-commerce and banking. Spain transposed it through Law 11/2023. Microenterprises providing services are exempt.
Public sector websites already had their own obligations (in Spain, Royal Decree 1112/2018).
The European standard EN 301 549 refers to WCAG for web requirements.

Software that's only sold to businesses may fall outside the directive, but public bodies and many large companies ask for AA conformance in their procurement processes.

The most common failures

The WebAIM Million report analyzes the homepages of the top one million websites every year. In 2024 it found WCAG failures on 95.9% of them. The most frequent:

Low-contrast text.
Images without alternative text.
Empty links and buttons, with no text describing them.
Form fields without labels.

Where to start

Run an automated tool (Lighthouse, axe or WAVE) to catch the obvious issues.
Navigate the site with the keyboard only: everything should be reachable and focus should be visible.
Test key pages with a screen reader, such as VoiceOver or NVDA.
Build accessibility into the design system so you don't have to fix it screen by screen.

Automated tools only catch part of the problems; manual review is still needed.

Related terms

Sources

W3C, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2.
WebAIM, The WebAIM Million.
Directive (EU) 2019/882 on the accessibility requirements for products and services.

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