Level AA. That's what we audit against unless your situation calls for something else, and it's the level most accessibility legislation and procurement language points at. Which instrument applies to you decides the rest.
The three levels
- Level A is the floor. Meeting it can still leave significant barriers, meaning it should be a starting point, not the end goal.
- Level AA is the working standard. It includes every Level A and Level AA success criterion, a much broader baseline than Level A while staying practical for real websites with real content.
- Level AAA is a pool of additional criteria to draw from where they suit your content. The WCAG standard advises against setting AAA conformance as a general policy for entire sites because some content can't satisfy every AAA criterion.
Which version
WCAG 2.2 is the current W3C Recommendation, first published in October 2023 and editorially updated in December 2024. It's what we audit against.
Legislation lags behind it. Different laws name different versions, and some Canadian requirements point at EN 301 549, adopted here in 2024 as CAN/ASC-EN 301 549:2024. For web content that edition maps to WCAG 2.1 Level AA, and it adds technology requirements beyond WCAG. We confirm the target with you at the start, so if you're bound by policy to a particular version, tell us and we'll report against it.