Does my site meet WCAG? What bernard checks against the standard
WCAG stands for the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. It is the standard for accessible websites, written by the W3C, the body that looks after the web’s shared rules. The current version is 2.2. It is organised as numbered rules (“success criteria”) at three levels: A, AA and AAA. When a client, a council or an insurer asks “is the site WCAG compliant?”, they nearly always mean level AA of the current version.
The prompt
“Check my site for accessibility problems and tell me, for each one you find, which WCAG rule it falls under and whether you can fix it. Fix what you can on a preview and show me the rest.”
Signed in, Get my prompt fills in your site for you. Otherwise press Copy and fill in the [bracketed] parts. First time? Connect your AI to bernard once: Use your own AI (opens in a new tab).
This page says what bernard does and does not do about it, in that order.
What bernard checks today
Ask your AI to check the site and it sweeps every page for the problems a machine can be certain about, and loads your busiest pages in a real phone-sized browser for two more. Each finding maps to a WCAG rule:
| bernard looks for | WCAG rule |
|---|---|
| Images with no description | 1.1.1 Non-text content |
| No main heading, or heading levels that skip | 1.3.1 Info and relationships, 2.4.6 Headings and labels |
| Text too faint against its background | 1.4.3 Contrast (minimum) |
| Links that only say “read more” or “click here” | 2.4.4 Link purpose |
| Buttons and links too small to tap on a phone | 2.5.8 Target size (minimum), new in 2.2 |
| Form fields with no label, or a hint the field is not linked to | 3.3.2 Labels or instructions |
| Buttons and controls with no name a screen reader can say | 4.1.2 Name, role, value |
| Menu buttons that point at a menu that does not exist | 4.1.2 Name, role, value |
| A role written onto an element that already has it, or “hidden” set on something a keyboard can still reach | 4.1.2 Name, role, value |
| The same id used twice on one page | Dropped from 2.2 as a rule, still breaks screen readers, still fixed |
That is a real slice of the standard, not the whole of it. Rules a machine cannot judge, such as whether an image description is truthful, whether the reading order makes sense, or whether the site works from the keyboard alone through a retained menu script, are not on this list.
What bernard fixes for you
Of the findings above, the mechanical ones are fixed on a preview for you to approve: a menu button repaired so it points at its menu, a redundant role removed, a hint linked to its field, a duplicate id renamed, a contrast pair moved to a passing colour. The ones that need a human decision, such as what a picture shows or where a link should say it goes, are drafted from the page and shown to you. You approve every change before it goes live, and you can put any of it back (see Put it back how it was).
Some of the standard is met before you do anything, because bernard’s own pages are built that way: the course and shop pages, the forms, the learner area and the cookie banner carry their names, roles and states already. Nothing to check there.
What bernard will not say, yet
bernard will not call your site “WCAG compliant”, and it will not put a badge on it. One automated pass cannot earn that, and a claim that is wrong is worse for you than no claim.
The check driven by the standard itself now exists. Ask your AI to check your site against WCAG and it opens your pages in a real browser, at phone width or desktop width, and tests them against the rules of WCAG 2.2 at levels A and AA. What comes back is organised by rule number, not as a score: each rule that fails, what it means in plain words, which pages and which part of the page, and what bernard can do about it. It finishes with one of two sentences, and both of them are limited to the pages it looked at: either it met the AA rules a machine can test on those pages, or it did not, and how many rules failed on how many pages. Because a browser has to open each page, it looks at a few of your pages by default and can be asked to go through the rest.
That is still your own assessment of your own site, made with a good tool. It is not a certificate, and it is not the whole standard: no automated check can tell you whether a picture’s description is truthful or whether the page makes sense read aloud in order.
What is planned, and not yet built: running the check on its own every night without being asked, and every page once a week; a dated page you can send someone, “meets WCAG 2.2 AA on the 20 pages checked, 14 September”; and an accessibility statement page that rewrites itself from the last check so it never goes stale. When those ship, this page will say so.
If you have been asked for evidence today
Ask your AI to run the check and write up the result: what it looked at, what it fixed and when, what remains and why. That is a dated record of work done against the standard’s rules, which is what most people asking actually need. It is not a certificate, and bernard does not certify.
The rules people cite
Two laws are usually behind the question. Read them, or ask someone who advises you, before deciding what applies to you; bernard does not give legal advice.
- The European Accessibility Act, Directive (EU) 2019/882, in force for new products and services from 28 June 2025: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2019/882/oj
- The UK Equality Act 2010, which places a duty on service providers without naming a web standard: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15
And the standard itself, from the W3C: https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG22/
The practical checks live in Is my site easy for everyone to use?, Make my site work with screen readers, Write good alt text for my images and Fix text that’s hard to read.
Questions people ask
- Can bernard tell me my site is WCAG compliant?
- No, and no honest tool can from one automated pass. bernard does now test your pages in a real browser against the rules of WCAG 2.2 at levels A and AA and answer rule by rule, fixing what it can on a preview you approve and listing the rest. That is your own assessment made with a good tool, not a certificate. The nightly run, a dated page you can send someone, and a self-updating accessibility statement are on bernard’s plan and not built.
- Someone asked me for an accessibility statement. What can I give them today?
- The result of bernard’s check: what was looked at, what was fixed and when, and what is left. Ask your AI to write it up as a short note. It is honest evidence, not a certificate. A statement page that updates itself is coming.
- Do I have to do this by law?
- It depends where you sell and to whom. Some rules point at WCAG; the two most often cited are linked at the end of this page. bernard does not give legal advice; it makes the site better for real people and gives you the record.
- What is the difference between A, AA and AAA?
- Three levels of the same standard. A is the floor, AA is what most organisations aim for and what regulators usually name, AAA is the stretch. bernard’s checks sit in A and AA.