TL;DR
Meeting WCAG 2.2 AA standards provides only a baseline for accessibility; compliant sites can still have unusable experiences due to gaps in the guidelines.
Key Points
- WCAG focuses on equal experience for disabled and non-disabled users, not overall UX quality or performance
- Compliant sites can have 1px font sizes, 30-second load times, or unintelligible audio as long as experiences are equally poor for everyone
- Guidelines don't mandate minimum font sizes, network performance, language readability (AAA only), or audio quality standards
- Subjective criteria like 'describe topic or purpose' allow complex jargon and acronyms to pass despite poor comprehension for general audiences
Why It Matters
Frontend developers and accessibility auditors need to understand WCAG AA compliance is a floor, not a ceiling. Organizations claiming 'full accessibility' based on WCAG scores may still be shipping products with genuinely unusable experiences for all users. This distinction matters for product quality, legal liability, and actual inclusive design.
Source: www.craigabbott.co.uk