WCAG 2.2 — What Changed and What It Means for Your UI

WCAG 2.2 became a W3C Recommendation in October 2023. For most teams, the delta from 2.1 is manageable — nine new success criteria, two removed. But the changes touch areas that many existing codebases handle poorly: focus appearance, dragging alternatives, and target sizes.

Focus Appearance (AA)

SC 2.4.11 requires that keyboard focus indicators have a minimum area and contrast ratio. The default browser focus ring passes in some browsers and fails in others. The safest approach is an explicit focus-visible ring with a 3:1 contrast ratio against adjacent colours.

Target Size Minimum (AA)

SC 2.5.8 requires interactive targets to be at least 24×24 CSS pixels, with exceptions for inline targets. This is a weaker requirement than the AAA version (44×44 from 2.1), but many icon buttons in existing UIs still fail it.

Dragging Movements (AA)

SC 2.5.7 requires that any functionality that uses dragging can also be accomplished with a single pointer without dragging. Sortable lists, sliders, and map pan controls are the common failure points.