The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are the internationally recognized standard for making digital content usable by people with disabilities. Published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), WCAG is organized around four principles — Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust (the POUR principles) — which break down into guidelines, and then into testable success criteria. Those criteria are grouped into three conformance levels: A (minimum), AA (the level most commonly required by law and policy), and AAA (the most demanding).
In this course, WCAG gives you a shared, checkable vocabulary for talking about interface quality. Instead of saying a design "feels hard to use," you can point to a specific success criterion — contrast, keyboard access, focus visibility, target size — and explain exactly what must change. This matters practically as well: WCAG 2.0, 2.1, and 2.2 AA are referenced by accessibility laws and procurement requirements in many countries, so knowing the structure and versions is part of professional competence.
As you watch the videos below, focus on three things: how a success criterion is worded and why that wording makes it testable, how the version numbers (2.0, 2.1, 2.2) build on one another rather than replacing one another, and how individual criteria map back to the POUR principles. Keep a running list of criteria you could actually check on an interface you have built — you will need that skill for the module assignments.
A plain-English overview of what WCAG is, who publishes it, and how the guidelines are structured into principles, guidelines, and success criteria. Based on its title and description, it should walk through the role of WCAG as the technical standard behind accessibility requirements and explain the conformance levels A, AA, and AAA. Expect general orientation rather than deep code-level implementation detail.
This is the natural starting point for the topic: it covers the "what WCAG is and why it matters" and "conformance levels" subtopics in one accessible explanation, from a channel focused specifically on accessibility and ADA compliance.
A short comparison of WCAG versions 2.0, 2.1, and 2.2 at the AA level, explaining how the newer versions relate to the older ones. It should clarify that later versions are additive — existing criteria carry forward while new ones are introduced — which is a common point of confusion for students and practitioners.
Four minutes of version clarity prevents a lot of later confusion, especially since course outcomes and many legal requirements reference WCAG 2.1 AA specifically while 2.2 is now current.
A summary of the six success criteria added at the AA level in WCAG 2.2, including items such as Focus Not Obscured (Minimum). The chaptered description suggests each criterion is introduced in turn with an explanation of what it requires. This gives you concrete examples of how a success criterion is written and what it asks a designer to verify.
It moves from structure to application, showing what individual success criteria actually look like and how they address real interaction barriers — directly supporting the "applying WCAG success criteria" subtopic.
Together these videos build the standards literacy MO1 requires: the overview establishes WCAG's structure and conformance levels, the version comparison situates WCAG 2.1 among its neighbors, and the 2.2 summary demonstrates concrete, testable criteria. The specific criteria discussed — focus visibility, target size, and related requirements — give you a checklist mindset for detecting visual, motor, and cognitive barriers in an existing interface (MO2) and for revising prototypes to meet a defined conformance level (MO3). Because WCAG AA is the benchmark cited in accessibility law and policy, understanding it also grounds the ethical and legal reasoning called for in MO4.
These videos were chosen from YouTube on October 3, 2026. Each has captions; the player turns them on. Videos on YouTube can be changed or removed — if one no longer plays, tell your instructor. If a player does not appear, use its Watch on YouTube link.