Website accessibility & WCAG 2.2: a corporate playbook

What WCAG 2.2 is and why it matters

Website accessibility means people with disabilities can perceive, navigate, and use your site. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2, published by the W3C in October 2023, are the global standard for measuring it. Most organizations target Level AA.

WCAG is built on four principles, often shortened to POUR: content must be Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust. Each principle breaks into testable success criteria at levels A, AA, and AAA.

Add ageing eyesight, temporary injuries, bright sunlight on a phone screen, or a site engineer reading specs on a tablet with gloves on, and accessibility stops being an edge case. It is usability for everyone.

Most sites still fail the basics

WebAIM runs an automated accessibility scan of the top one million home pages every year. The results are consistent: nearly every page has detectable WCAG failures, and the same few issues dominate.

What changed in WCAG 2.2

WCAG 2.2 adds new success criteria on top of 2.1 and removes 4.1.1 Parsing, which modern browsers made obsolete. The additions mostly target keyboard users, people with motor impairments, and people with cognitive disabilities.

• •Focus Not Obscured (2.4.11, AA) — sticky headers and cookie banners must not hide the focused element.
• •Dragging Movements (2.5.7, AA) — anything done by dragging needs a single-pointer alternative.
• •Target Size Minimum (2.5.8, AA) — interactive targets at least 24×24 CSS pixels, or enough spacing.
• •Consistent Help (3.2.6, A) — help links or contact options appear in the same place across pages.
• •Redundant Entry (3.3.7, A) — do not make users re-type information they already gave.
• •Accessible Authentication (3.3.8, AA) — no cognitive tests like memorizing or transcribing to log in.

The business case, not just compliance

Accessible sites tend to be better sites. The same fixes that help a screen reader user also help search engines and AI crawlers understand your content.

• •SEO and GEO: proper headings, alt text, and semantic HTML give crawlers clean structure to index and cite.
• •Conversion: clear labels, visible focus, and generous tap targets reduce form errors for everyone.
• •Procurement: large clients and public bodies increasingly ask vendors about accessibility conformance.
• •Legal readiness: the European Accessibility Act has applied to many digital products and services since 28 June 2025.

“Accessibility is not a feature you add at the end. It is the quality bar you build to from the first component.”

For Indonesian companies selling to multinational clients or exporting to Europe, a documented WCAG 2.2 AA target is becoming a practical expectation in vendor reviews — not a nice-to-have.

A fix-first plan for corporate sites

You do not need a full audit to start. Work through this order:

1. 1.Run an automated scan (axe DevTools, WAVE, or Lighthouse) on your top ten templates.
2. 2.Fix color contrast in your design tokens so every page inherits the correction.
3. 3.Add alt text to meaningful images and labels to every form field.
4. 4.Tab through each template with the keyboard only: check focus order and visible focus.
5. 5.Test one key journey — such as the contact form — with a screen reader (VoiceOver or NVDA).
6. 6.Add accessibility checks to your component library and CI so regressions are caught early.

<!-- label every field, describe errors in text -->
<label for="email">Work email</label>
<input id="email" type="email" autocomplete="email"
       aria-describedby="email-error" required>
<p id="email-error" role="alert">Enter a valid work email.</p>