About Supplemental Guidance

About WCAG and Supplemental Guidance

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) provides requirements for making websites, applications, and other digital content accessible to people with disabilities. It is introduced in the WCAG 2 Overview .

There are additional resources that help you understand and implement WCAG. They are explained in the WCAG 2 Documents .

Some accessibility issues did not fit as WCAG 2 requirements (called “success criteria”). This supplemental guidance provides advice on addressing many of those accessibility issues.

Following this guidance is not required to meet WCAG. And, we encourage you to follow this guidance in order meet more user needs.

The accessibility issues addressed in this guidance are essential for people with certain disabilities to be able to use digital technology.

About Cognitive Accessibility Guidance

This guidance provides a set of “Objectives” for reducing barriers experienced by people with cognitive and learning disabilities. The Objectives provide an overview and include a set of “Design Patterns”. Each Design Pattern explains what to do in order to improve accessibility, how this helps when applied, and includes examples.

The Objectives and Design Patterns are from the more comprehensive document “Making Content Usable for People with Cognitive and Learning Disabilities”. That document provides additional background, user stories, personas, a glossary, and other guidance.

Broader information on cognitive accessibility in WCAG and on-going work on cognitive accessibility support at W3C WAI is in Cognitive Accessibility at W3C

About Low Vision Accessibility Guidance

Guidance on how to better meet the needs of people with low vision will be added in 2022.