What WCAG actually means (and why I trained in it)

When I tell someone I'm WCAG certified, the most common reaction is a polite smile that means "I have no idea what that means." That's fair: digital accessibility is still poorly understood, even though it concerns, one way or another, almost everyone. This article is my attempt to explain simply what it is, who it serves, and why I chose to make it a core skill of my work.

WCAG, in plain terms

WCAG stands for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. It's an international standard, published by the W3C (the organization that defines web standards), which sets precise criteria for a website or app to be usable by as many people as possible.

In France, these rules are adapted into the RGAA, used to evaluate compliance for public-sector sites. WCAG itself is the reference used worldwide.

The guidelines are built around 4 principles, easy to remember with the acronym POUR:

• Perceivable — information must be perceivable regardless of the sense used (alt text on images, captions, sufficient contrast...)
• Operable — the interface must be navigable by keyboard, with no imposed time limits, no keyboard traps
• Understandable — the content and behavior of the site must be clear and predictable
• Robust — the code must be compatible with assistive technologies (screen readers, braille displays, etc.)

Who it's really for

This is where most people get it wrong: accessibility isn't just "for blind users." That's one of the most persistent misconceptions about the topic.

It serves people with visual, motor, hearing or cognitive disabilities, of course. But also someone with a broken arm navigating by keyboard instead of a mouse. Someone browsing in bright sunlight who needs strong contrast. Someone on public transport without sound who needs captions. Older adults, whose eyesight and fine motor control decline over time — a share of the population that grows every year. And more broadly, a site well-structured for accessibility is almost always simpler, faster, and better indexed for everyone.

Accessibility isn't a checkbox for a minority: it's a quality requirement that benefits a majority of situations, permanent or temporary.

Why a business should care

There's first a legal angle: in France, RGAA applies to public services and increasingly to private companies; at the European level, the European Accessibility Act now covers a wide range of digital products and services. It's no longer optional.

There's also a simple economic angle: an inaccessible site shuts the door on a meaningful share of its potential visitors, often without even realizing it. And there's a reputational angle — more and more people and companies pay attention to who they choose to work with on these topics.

What this training actually taught me

Technically, it means knowing how to check contrast ratios, structure a site with semantic HTML instead of divs everywhere, use ARIA attributes only when necessary (not as a shortcut), guarantee full keyboard navigation, and test with a real screen reader instead of guessing.

But there's also a human dimension that technique alone doesn't give you. Before design, I spent several years working directly with people with disabilities — daily support, adapted trips, group leadership. That experience changes how I approach accessibility: it's not an abstract checklist, it's a real person in front of their screen.

What it changes in my work

Concretely, it runs through every project: the audits I can run on existing sites, but also how I design a new interface from day one. This very portfolio is a direct example — full keyboard navigation, checked contrast, animations that can be disabled, and a voice assistant designed to be genuinely usable with a screen reader (more on that in another article).

If you have an existing site and doubts about its accessibility, or a project to build with these requirements from the start, that's exactly the kind of work I like being asked about.