Accessibility Guidance for Assessment

For convenience, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Success Criteria are organized on this site by both Principle and Conformance Level.

View Guidance by WCAG Principle

Viewing the WCAG Guidance by Principle provides a holistic view of how WCAG guidelines are organized by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). This view will allow you to look at similar topic Guidelines in order, regardless of their Conformance Level.

The W3C has arranged the Guidelines around the following four principles. These principles lay the foundation necessary for functional access to web content and web applications.

  1. Perceivable - Users must be able to perceive the information being presented (information cannot be dependent on single sensory capabilities, such as sight or hearing).
  2. Operable - Users must be able to operate the interface (the interface cannot require interaction that a user may not be able to perform, such as mouse-only operation).
  3. Understandable - Users must be able to understand the information as well as the operation of the user interface (the content or operation cannot be beyond the users understanding).
  4. Robust - Users must be able to access the content with a wide variety of user agents, including assistive technologies (as technologies and user agents evolve, the content should remain accessible).

View Guidance by Conformance Level

Viewing WCAG Guidance by Conformance Level (A, AA, and AAA) shows the incremental progression of guidance and can support efforts to prioritize accessibility remediations.

Pearson Assessments strives to meet accessibility requirements for Level AA conformance at a minimum. AA conformance is the legal standard in the majority of countries where Pearson Assessments does business. AA conformance includes all the A and AA Success Criteria.

  • Level A Success Criteria are those which will have a high impact on a broad array of user populations. In other words, they (usually) don’t focus on one type of disability only. There are 30 Level A Guidelines in WCAG 2.1.
  • Level AA Success Criteria will also have a high impact for users. Sometimes only specific user populations will be impacted, but the impact is important. There are 20 Level AA Guidelines in WCAG 2.1.
  • Level AAA Success Criteria are often focused on improvements for specific user populations and define more strict requirements to be met. There are Level AAA Guidelines in WCAG 2.1.