Accessibility in 2026 — What Actually Changed

Updated 2026-03-27 · SPUNK13 · Back to spunk.bet

Accessibility changed more through regulation than through technology over the last two years. If you build for the web commercially, three things moved: a European enforcement deadline arrived, WCAG 2.2 became the criteria everyone is audited against, and US public-sector rules put a hard date on the calendar. Here is what actually changed and what it means for your backlog.

The European Accessibility Act became enforceable

The EAA's compliance date for products and services placed on the EU market was 28 June 2025. It covers e-commerce, banking, e-books, ticketing and transport services, and it applies to companies selling into the EU regardless of where they are based. The technical standard member states point at is EN 301 549, which in practice means WCAG level AA. Microenterprises are exempt for services, but "we are outside the EU" is not the exemption people assumed it was.

WCAG 2.2 is now the baseline you get audited against

WCAG 2.2 became a W3C Recommendation in October 2023 and added nine success criteria. The ones that most often fail an existing site:

• 2.4.11 Focus Not Obscured (Minimum) — sticky headers and cookie bars must not cover the focused element. This breaks a very large share of otherwise-compliant sites.
• 2.5.8 Target Size (Minimum) — interactive targets need to be at least 24 by 24 CSS pixels, or have adequate spacing. Icon-only toolbars are the usual casualty.
• 2.5.7 Dragging Movements — anything draggable needs a single-pointer alternative, so sliders and kanban boards need click or keyboard equivalents.
• 3.3.8 Accessible Authentication — no cognitive function test with no alternative, which puts pressure on puzzle CAPTCHAs and on "type the third character of your password".
• 3.3.7 Redundant Entry — do not make people retype information they already gave you in the same process.

The old 4.1.1 Parsing criterion was removed, so duplicate-ID and unclosed-tag findings no longer count as a WCAG failure on their own.

The US Title II rule put a date on it

The Department of Justice's rule under ADA Title II, published in 2024, requires state and local government web content and mobile apps to meet WCAG 2.1 level AA. The larger entity tier — populations of 50,000 or more — has an April 2026 compliance date, with smaller entities a year behind. If you sell software to universities, transit agencies or city governments, their procurement now asks for a current VPAT and means it.

What the tooling caught up on

Automated checkers added 2.2 rules quickly: axe-core covers target size and focus obscuring, and Lighthouse's accessibility category inherits axe's ruleset. Browser support for :focus-visible, prefers-reduced-motion and forced-colors mode is now universal enough to use without fallbacks. Form-associated custom elements mean design-system components can finally participate in native form validation instead of faking it.

What still needs a human

Automated tools typically flag only about a third of real WCAG failures. Focus order, meaningful alt text, error messages that actually explain the error, and whether a screen-reader user can complete the purchase are all things a person has to check. Budget for a keyboard-only pass and a screen-reader pass on your three most important journeys — that finds more than any additional scanner.