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WCAG conformance claim checker

A conformance claim has five required components, and most drafts carry three. This walks through all five, then the three scope conditions the claim rests on. Start with the first question even if you think you have not made a claim, because a badge is one.

Before the fiveAre you showing a conformance logo or badge anywhere?

A logo is itself a claim, and it has to be accompanied by the same five components as a written one. So a site with a badge and no claim page has made an incomplete claim rather than no claim.

Component 1 of 5Does the claim carry the date of the claim?

Required: Date of the claim.

Component 2 of 5Does it name the guidelines by title and version, and give the address they live at?

Required: Guidelines title, version and URI.

Component 3 of 5Does it state the conformance level satisfied, as A, AA or AAA?

Required: Conformance level satisfied: Level A, AA or AAA.

Component 4 of 5Does it describe the pages covered, and say whether subdomains are included?

Required: A concise description of the web pages, such as a list of addresses for which the claim is made, including whether subdomains are included.

Component 5 of 5Does it list the web content technologies relied upon?

Required: A list of the web content technologies relied upon.

Scope checkIs any part of a covered page left out of the evaluation?

A carve-out for a map, a chart, an embedded player or a legacy widget all count here.

Scope checkDo the covered pages include a multi-step process?

A checkout, a signup, a booking, an application. Anything where a sequence of steps has to be finished to get the result.

Scope checkIs there content on those pages that you do not control?

Comments, reviews, aggregated feeds, advertising inserted after the page was published.

What the answers say

Nothing answered yet. Work down the questions on the left and the missing components appear here, with what to write for each one.

What it checks

  • The five required components

    The date, the guidelines title with version and address, the level satisfied, a description of the pages covered including whether subdomains are in, and the technologies relied upon. Five, no more and no fewer.

  • Whether a logo has quietly made the claim for you

    A conformance logo is itself a claim and has to be accompanied by the same five components. A badge with no claim page is an incomplete claim rather than no claim.

  • Whether part of a page was carved out

    Conformance is for full pages only and cannot be achieved if part of a page is excluded. So a carve-out shrinks what the claim can cover.

  • Whether a process is only half covered

    When a page is one of a series presenting a process, every page in that process has to conform at the level claimed or better. Four out of five pages in a checkout is none of them.

  • What to do about content you do not control

    WCAG gives two routes and no third: monitor and repair within two business days, or make a statement of partial conformance in the prescribed form. It prints the form rather than paraphrasing it.

What it cannot tell you

  • Whether the claim is true. It reads six answers and has never seen your site. A complete claim about content that does not meet the criteria is a complete claim and a false one, and only an evaluation settles which you have.
  • Whether you need to make a claim at all. Claims are optional, and you can conform to WCAG without making one. Where a law requires a published statement, that is a different document with its own required contents.
  • Whether a claim satisfies a particular law. Some regimes adopt the conformance requirements by name and some do not, and applicability is a legal question rather than a checklist one.
  • Anything about the optional components. They are listed on the result, labelled optional, and never counted as missing, because WCAG introduces them with the words consider providing and a checker that turns a recommendation into a defect is inventing a rule.

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