4.1The Standard

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 at the AA conformance level is the standard that most laws reference. It defines success criteria across four principles (Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust) that make web content accessible to people with disabilities.

Automating compliance checks catches roughly 30-40% of accessibility issues -- the rest require manual testing and judgment. That 30-40% includes the most common violations: missing alt text, insufficient color contrast, missing form labels, and broken heading hierarchy. Catching these automatically on every PR is the minimum viable accessibility practice.