WCAG 2.2

WCAG 2.2 is version 2.2 of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, published as a W3C Recommendation in 2023. It adds nine success criteria on top of WCAG 2.1.

The new criteria lean towards usability and cognitive load rather than pure markup. They cover things like keeping focus visible and unobscured, making dragging movements optional, providing consistent help, and reducing the burden of authentication and repeated entry. Several are as much about whether an interface is reasonable to use as whether it is technically conformant.

Conformance and usability are not the same test. You can pass WCAG 2.2 and still ship a journey that confuses real people, because conformance checks the criteria a tool or auditor can verify, not whether someone actually completes the task.

OpenScouter maps findings to the WCAG 2.2 criteria that behavioural research can legitimately observe, and lists the assistive-technology-dependent criteria as out of scope in every report. It complements a conformance audit; it does not replace one.