1. Overview
WCAG 2.2 became a W3C Recommendation on 5 October 2023. The W3C last updated it on 12 December 2024. It is identical to ISO/IEC 40500:2025. It is also the version of WCAG that EN 301 549 V4.1.1 references in clauses 9, 10 and 11. That makes it the version that matters for the European Accessibility Act.
If you learned WCAG on 2.0 (2008) or 2.1 (2018), nothing you learned is wrong. WCAG 2.2 added nine success criteria and removed one. It renumbered nothing and changed no existing requirement. This lesson looks at the version as a whole. It also looks at the part of WCAG that is not a success criterion at all. That part is conformance, or what it means to conform.
Conformance is where most of the arguments happen. A page does not "mostly conform". Either it satisfies every applicable criterion at a level and meets the five conformance requirements, or it does not. Three documents depend on that distinction: an accessibility statement, a procurement response and the Annex V description the EAA requires. They also depend on knowing how much of it an automated tool can establish.
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Sources
- W3C, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2, in particular the Conformance section, and What's New in WCAG 2.2.
- W3C, Understanding Conformance and Website Accessibility Conformance Evaluation Methodology (WCAG-EM) 1.0.
- ETSI, CEN and CENELEC, EN 301 549 V4.1.1 (2026-09), clauses 9.0, 9.5 and 9.6, available from the ETSI standards server.
- Directive (EU) 2019/882 (the European Accessibility Act), Article 13 and Annexes I and V.
- Commission Implementing Decision (EU) 2018/1523, the model accessibility statement under the Web Accessibility Directive, for the "fully", "partially" and "not compliant" wording.
