Field Notes
WCAG 2.2 AA Without Excuses: Building Accessible Sites That Hold Up
Quick answer: WCAG 2.2 Level AA is the current W3C accessibility standard, and it’s the one we hold every site we ship to: no overlay widgets, no third-party shortcuts. U.S. courts in ADA Title III cases still most often reference WCAG 2.1 AA. Because 2.2 AA contains nearly all of 2.1 AA plus six new criteria, building to 2.2 meets the legal benchmark with margin. Federal website accessibility lawsuits hit 3,117 in 2025, up 27% in a year. Real conformance doesn’t make you immune. It gives you documented diligence, which materially reduces both your exposure and the size of any settlement demand. Below: what 2.2 AA requires, what changed from 2.1, why overlays are a liability, and what your risk looks like in 2026.
If you operate a public-facing website for a U.S. small business, web accessibility is no longer a nice-to-have. It’s a business risk you carry whether you’ve thought about it or not.
Federal courts saw 3,117 website accessibility lawsuits in 2025, up 27% from 2,452 in 2024. Website cases are now 36% of all ADA Title III suits in federal court, up from 28%. Nearly half of federal cases in the first half of 2025 (46%) involved companies that had been sued before. Ecommerce and retail sites account for roughly 69–77% of digital accessibility suits, and the barriers named are usually transactional: checkout flows, booking systems, contact forms. The plaintiffs’ bar has industrialized the process, and the usual defense (we didn’t know, we’re small, we’ll fix it) doesn’t reliably stop a settlement demand.
The good news is that the technical work to materially reduce this risk is well understood. We hold every site we ship to a documented standard, and here’s what that actually means.
The Standard: WCAG 2.2 AA, With 2.1 AA as the Legal Floor
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines are published by the W3C. WCAG 2.2 became the current recommendation in October 2023. Its predecessor, WCAG 2.1 Level AA, is still what U.S. courts most often reference in ADA web cases. It’s also the standard the Department of Justice wrote into its 2024 Title II rule for state and local government websites.
The two aren’t in competition. WCAG 2.2 is backward compatible: a page that meets 2.2 AA also meets 2.1 AA, apart from one obsolete criterion (4.1.1 Parsing) that 2.2 retired. So we target 2.2 AA. It clears the bar courts use today and the bar they are moving toward.
There is no legally binding “ADA certification” for websites. It doesn’t exist. What exists is conformance to WCAG, documentation of the work, honest disclosure of any limitations, and a real response path for user-reported issues. That’s what a defensible posture looks like. Anyone selling you a “certification” or a “100% ADA compliant” guarantee is selling you a problem dressed as a product.
What Conformance Actually Requires
WCAG AA is structured around four principles, each with concrete success criteria. The shorthand version:
- Perceivable: all content can be perceived regardless of sensory ability. Images have alt text. Videos have captions. Color isn’t the only way information is conveyed. Contrast ratios meet specific minimums.
- Operable: all functionality is keyboard-accessible. Focus indicators are visible. There are no keyboard traps. Animations can be paused. Sessions don’t time out without warning.
- Understandable: navigation is consistent. Language is declared. Form errors are identified and explained. Behavior is predictable.
- Robust: content works with current and future assistive technology. ARIA is used correctly when needed.
These aren’t checklists you knock out once. They’re posture decisions baked into the build.
What WCAG 2.2 Adds
WCAG 2.2 adds nine success criteria. Six of them are at Level A or AA, which means they’re part of the standard we build to:
| Criterion | Level | What it means in practice |
|---|---|---|
| 2.4.11 Focus Not Obscured (Minimum) | AA | A sticky header, cookie banner, or chat bubble can’t fully hide the element a keyboard user just tabbed to. |
| 2.5.7 Dragging Movements | AA | Anything you can drag (a slider, a map, a reorderable list) also works with a single click or tap. |
| 2.5.8 Target Size (Minimum) | AA | Buttons and links are at least 24×24 CSS pixels, or spaced so a near-miss doesn’t hit the neighbor. |
| 3.2.6 Consistent Help | A | Help options such as phone, chat, or a contact link appear in the same place on every page. |
| 3.3.7 Redundant Entry | A | A multi-step form doesn’t make people re-type what they already entered. |
| 3.3.8 Accessible Authentication (Minimum) | AA | Logging in doesn’t depend on a memory or puzzle test. Paste and password managers have to work. |
Most of these land squarely on the places small business sites break: booking widgets, multi-step forms, cookie banners, and floating chat buttons. Those are the same transactional surfaces plaintiffs target, which is why we treat 2.2 as the working standard rather than a stretch goal.
Automated Tools Are Not Enough
This is the trap most well-intentioned operators fall into. They run their site through WAVE or Lighthouse, get a 95, and assume they’re compliant. They aren’t.
Automated tools catch roughly 30–40% of WCAG failures. The rest is caught only by manual testing: keyboard navigation, screen reader spot-checks, contrast review on dynamic states, focus management on interactive components, and human judgment on whether content is genuinely accessible or just technically compliant. Several of the new 2.2 criteria, like focus being hidden behind a sticky header, are exactly the kind of thing a scanner misses.
A 100/100 Lighthouse accessibility score on a site that fails the basic keyboard test is not a compliant site. It’s a site with a high score.
Our internal operating standard requires both: automated scanning with WAVE, Lighthouse, and axe DevTools, plus manual keyboard testing on every page and quarterly screen reader spot-checks on master pages with NVDA or VoiceOver.
Overlays Are Not a Substitute
Accessibility overlay widgets (the sidebar icon offering an “accessibility menu”) are not a substitute for actual conformance. Roughly a quarter of 2024 ADA web lawsuits targeted sites that already had an overlay installed. We don’t use them, and we don’t recommend them. If a vendor is selling you one as your ADA solution, get a second opinion.
Build Platform Matters
Not every platform supports full conformance. We’re honest about this with clients.
Tier 1 platforms (Astro, custom HTML, or any framework where we control the full markup output) can target WCAG 2.2 AA with no third-party widget exceptions. This is the recommended posture for any business where accessibility risk is non-negotiable.
Tier 2 platforms (GoHighLevel and some other site builders) have known widget-level accessibility ceilings we can’t work around. The GoHighLevel multi-select form widget generates a role="combobox" without aria-expanded, which is a documented platform bug. Google reCAPTCHA has its own documented accessibility limitations, and puzzle-style challenges sit uneasily with 2.2’s Accessible Authentication criterion.
For Tier 2 sites, we target WCAG 2.2 AA with documented exceptions for known third-party limitations, and we disclose those exceptions in the accessibility statement. That’s a defensible posture, but it isn’t zero-risk.
For any client where the legal posture matters most, we recommend Tier 1.
The Title II Deadline Moved, and It Doesn’t Apply to You (Directly)
You may have seen the April 2026 Title II deadline in the news. Title II covers state and local governments, not private businesses. Private businesses fall under Title III, which has no rule-based deadline. It’s enforced through lawsuits, which is why the filing numbers above matter more to you than any calendar date.
For the record: on April 20, 2026, the DOJ issued an interim final rule pushing the Title II deadlines back one year. Public entities serving 50,000 or more people now have until April 26, 2027. Smaller public entities and special districts have until April 26, 2028. The required standard is WCAG 2.1 AA. If you sell to schools, cities, or public agencies, expect accessibility requirements to start showing up in their vendor contracts ahead of those dates.
What a Defensible Posture Includes
Beyond the technical work, the documentation matters. Every site we ship gets:
- A published Accessibility Statement at
/accessibility/ - The standard targeted (WCAG 2.2 AA), the build tier, the audit tools used, and the date of the most recent review
- Honest disclosure of any known third-party limitations
- A clear feedback path with a stated SLA: we commit to responding to accessibility issues within 2 business days
Plaintiffs’ firms look for sites with no statement, no disclosed posture, and no response path. A site with all three signals that the operator takes this seriously, and that’s often enough to send the firm toward easier targets.
The Business Case
The defensive case is real, but the offensive case is bigger. Accessible sites are faster, more keyboard-friendly, more mobile-friendly, better for SEO, and more compatible with the assistive technology millions of Americans use every day. Several 2.2 criteria, like bigger tap targets and forms that remember what you typed, are simply better mobile UX. There’s no version of “accessible” that isn’t also “better website.”
If you want a real picture of where your current site stands, request an audit. We’ll deliver a prioritized findings report against WCAG 2.2 AA, a remediation estimate, and a draft accessibility statement, all in about a week.
Sources: 2025 federal filing counts and the Title III share from Seyfarth Shaw’s ADA Title III blog. Repeat-defendant, ecommerce and overlay shares from TestParty’s 2025–2026 litigation analysis. Title II extension via Parker Poe on JD Supra. Updated October 5, 2026.
Common Questions
Questions this raises.
Is WCAG 2.2 legally required?
No U.S. law names WCAG 2.2 for private businesses. Courts in ADA Title III cases most often reference WCAG 2.1 AA, and the DOJ's 2024 Title II rule for state and local governments adopts 2.1 AA. WCAG 2.2 AA includes nearly everything in 2.1 AA plus six new A and AA criteria, so building to 2.2 AA meets the benchmark courts use and the newer bar.
What is the difference between WCAG 2.1 and WCAG 2.2?
WCAG 2.2, published by the W3C in October 2023, adds nine success criteria, six of them at Level A or AA: Focus Not Obscured (Minimum), Dragging Movements, Target Size (Minimum), Consistent Help, Redundant Entry, and Accessible Authentication (Minimum). It also removes 4.1.1 Parsing, which modern browsers made obsolete.
When is the ADA Title II web accessibility deadline?
A DOJ interim final rule issued April 20, 2026 extended the deadlines by one year. Public entities serving 50,000 people or more must comply by April 26, 2027. Smaller public entities and special district governments have until April 26, 2028. Title II applies to state and local governments, not private businesses.
Does an accessibility overlay make a website ADA compliant?
No. Overlay widgets do not fix the underlying markup, and roughly a quarter of 2024 ADA web lawsuits targeted sites that already had one installed. Conformance comes from the code, the content, and documented manual testing.