When should you use Meets WCAG accessibility criteria?
email-accessibility · functional · recommended
When should you use this check?
Run this when accessibility is an obligation or a commitment rather than an aspiration. Section 508, EN 301 549 and the 2024 ADA Title II rule all point at WCAG AA, which is why AA is the default level here. It is most valuable on templates rather than individual campaigns, because template-level failures repeat across every send that inherits them — certify the template once and the campaigns come along with it.
When should you not?
Do not use it as a compliance certificate. It decides success criteria from the email's own source, and anything the source cannot decide is abstained on and said so, never guessed — a pass is evidence, not a legal conclusion. Skip it on mail that is not part of any accessibility scope, and do not reach for it when your actual question is narrower: alt text has its own check, and whether the message survives images being blocked has another.
What does it inspect?
Source-decidable WCAG checks over the email: language declaration, table semantics, colour contrast, link naming, tap-target size, and animation duration — enabled by conformance level (A, AA default, AAA). Checks that cannot be decided from source abstain with a typed reason rather than guessing, and the result is never a compliance verdict. See docs/EMAIL-ACCESSIBILITY.md.
What does a failure mean?
A failure names the success criterion that was not met at the level you selected. Because judgement is limited to what the source can settle, a failure is a strong statement — it is not an inference about how a screen reader might behave but something the markup itself decided. Abstentions matter as much as failures and should be read rather than skipped: they mark the criteria a human still has to check, which is precisely the list an accessibility reviewer wants.
What are the Standard defaults — and why?
Four parameters carry the check. `wcagLevel` defaults to `AA`, the level every accessibility law actually references, and W3C itself advises against AAA as a general policy. `ambiguousLinkPhrases` holds the usual "click here" family and is consulted only at AAA, where link purpose out of context becomes a criterion. `logoPatterns` defaults to `logo`, `wordmark` and `brandmark` because logotypes are exempt from contrast by the success criterion itself. `enabledPolicyChecks` is empty by default, since findings with no success criterion behind them are policy rather than WCAG.
How does an agent call it?
{
"type": "email",
"validations": [
"email-accessibility"
]
}
Who governs the Standard?
Schemafirst.org publishes community-governed standards for digital QA. ArbiterQA is a sponsor and commercial licensee of those standards; citation does not mean Schemafirst operates ArbiterQA.
Author ArbiterQA · Reviewed by ArbiterQA · 2026-08-14