Teams planning accessibility work often ask whether to target WCAG 2.2 or wait for WCAG 3.0. The honest answer is that 2.2 is the enforceable standard today, 3.0 is a substantial, still-evolving rewrite years from being a legal benchmark anywhere, and conflating the two creates real risk of under-investing in what’s actually required now.
WCAG 2.2 became a W3C Recommendation in October 2023, adding new success criteria on top of 2.1…
WCAG 3.0 (still in draft, with W3C explicitly describing it as years away from Recommendation…
Target WCAG 2.2 AA as the current, enforceable bar — it’s what regulators, auditors,…
WCAG 2.2 became a W3C Recommendation in October 2023, adding new success criteria on top of 2.1 — including larger minimum target sizes for touch interfaces, clearer focus indicators, and accessible authentication requirements that don’t rely purely on cognitive tests like puzzle-solving. It’s the version most current legal frameworks reference or are moving toward: the European Accessibility Act, several U.S. state and federal requirements, and most enterprise procurement VPAT requests.
WCAG 3.0 (still in draft, with W3C explicitly describing it as years away from Recommendation status) isn’t simply adding more success criteria to the existing pass/fail model — it’s restructuring how conformance is scored, moving toward a more granular, outcome-based rating system intended to better reflect the actual experience of a broader range of disabilities than the current binary conformance levels (A, AA, AAA) capture well.
If a vendor or internal team asks “should we build to 2.2 or wait for 3.0,” the answer is 2.2, without much ambiguity — it’s the version actually referenced in current law and procurement, and 3.0’s timeline and final structure remain genuinely unsettled enough that building against it today isn’t a reliable target.
There’s no firm date — the W3C has described it as years away from final Recommendation status, and legal frameworks generally only reference WCAG versions once they’re finalized, so adoption as a legal benchmark would follow well after that. Treat any specific near-term date claim with skepticism.
WCAG 2.2 AA conformance is the widely accepted technical benchmark referenced for EAA compliance, but the EAA also includes non-web requirements (certain hardware, service design) that WCAG alone doesn’t cover, so full EAA compliance is broader than web conformance alone.
Not yet — the scoring model is still in draft and has changed during the standard’s development. Build your current VPAT and conformance reporting against 2.2’s established pass/fail structure, and revisit once 3.0’s model is closer to finalized.