Fill in a short form and get an accessibility statement in the structure W3C recommends: your target standard, an honest conformance status, the problems you know about with a way round each, how you tested and how people reach you. It never says “ADA compliant”. See our own statement for one in use.
What the statement covers
W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative says a statement needs three things at least: a commitment to accessibility for people with disabilities, the standard you apply (such as WCAG 2.2), and a way to contact you when something does not work. It also advises listing known limitations, how you test, and what the site relies on. This generator writes all of them, in that order, in plain words.
Two choices carry the weight. The first is the standard: WCAG 2.2 Level AA is the current one, and a site that meets it also meets 2.1 and 2.0; WCAG 2.1 Level AA is the version some contracts and the DOJ rule for state and local governments name. The second is the status, where the honest answer for most small sites is “partially conformant” with a list of what does not work yet.
The four conformance statuses W3C's generator offers, and when each one is true| Status | W3C's meaning | Use it when |
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| Fully conformant | the content fully conforms to the standard without any exceptions | Every page in scope was tested against every Level A and AA criterion and nothing failed. Rare for a small site. |
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| Partially conformant | some parts of the content do not fully conform to the standard | You know the site mostly works and you can name the parts that do not. The usual honest answer. |
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| Non conformant | the content does not conform to the standard | Testing found barriers across the site, such as a checkout that cannot be finished by keyboard. |
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| Not assessed | the content has not been evaluated, or the results are not available | Nobody has tested the site yet. Say so, and still give a way to report a barrier. |
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Our own accessibility statement is a worked example of the same structure: a target, where we are, how we tested, the gaps we know about and how to report a barrier. It names what we have not checked yet, such as screen readers, which is the part most statements leave out.
What WCAG asks of a claim
WCAG does not require a statement or a claim. But the moment yours says “fully conformant”, it is a conformance claim, and WCAG lists what a claim must contain:
What WCAG asks
Conformance claims are not required. Authors can conform to WCAG 2.2 without making a claim. However, if a conformance claim is made, then the conformance claim must include the following information:
- Date of the claim
- Guidelines title, version and URI
- Conformance level satisfied: (Level A, AA or AAA)
- A concise description of the web pages, such as a list of URIs for which the claim is made
- A list of the web content technologies relied upon.
WCAG 2.2, section 5.3.1 Required Components of a Conformance Claim
The generator covers each one: the date line, the WCAG link, the level, the website address the statement covers, and the technologies field. W3C's guidance adds that a statement is not a technical assessment; it should say “videos do not have captions”, not “Success Criterion 1.2.2 was not met”. That is why the limitations fields ask for plain words.
One trap in the wording: “partially conformant” in a statement is W3C's plain-language status. WCAG's own “statement of partial conformance” (section 5.4) is narrower: it covers content you do not control, such as comments or inserted ads. Do not borrow that phrase for your own pages.
What a weak statement usually looks like
- A badge instead of a status
- “This site is ADA compliant” or “certified accessible”. No federal body certifies a website under the ADA, and the Department of Justice has no detailed web regulation for businesses, so the sentence cannot be backed by anything. Name the WCAG version, the level and the status instead; the generator warns if your own text slips into compliance words.
- A widget named as the reason the site is accessible
- Statements that credit an overlay toolbar for conformance have aged badly. The FTC alleged that one overlay vendor claimed its widget could make any website WCAG-compliant when it did not, and its 2025 order bars that claim without evidence. Say what was fixed in the site itself. Why overlays do not make a site conform.
- No way to report a barrier, or only a form that has one
- The contact path is the part a reader actually uses. Give at least two ways in (an email address and a phone number), and check that your contact form works by keyboard before you name it.
- No date, or a date from years ago
- W3C notes that a statement more than a year old may be read as unmaintained. Date it the day you publish, write the month in words, and re-date it after each round of testing.
- Criterion numbers where plain words belong
- “Fails 1.4.3” tells a visitor nothing. “Some grey text on the menu page is hard to read” tells them what to expect and where.
Where to put it and when to update it
Publish the statement as its own page and link it from the footer of every page, with the same link name everywhere (“Accessibility statement” is the common one). W3C advises exactly that, and it lines up with three criteria you are testing anyway: links repeated across pages stay in the same order (3.2.3), a link that does the same job keeps the same name (3.2.4), and contact details repeated on several pages sit in the same place relative to the rest of the page (3.2.6, new in WCAG 2.2).
Update it when something changes: a new round of testing, a fix that removes a limitation, a new part of the site such as online booking. Use the WCAG 2.2 AA checklist to produce the record you describe under “How we tested”, and the focus order checklist for the keyboard walk. If an outside auditor tests the site, link their report or summary from the statement; our comparison of WCAG audit services shows what each one hands back.
A statement and the law
A statement does not make a site meet WCAG, and the ADA has no rule for private businesses that spells out what one must say. What the Department of Justice's web guidance does say is that sites which give the public a way to report accessibility problems let owners fix them. A clear statement with a working contact path is that way in, and it shows a visitor, or a lawyer reading your site after a demand letter, that you know where the gaps are and are working on them.
Some places do require one: public bodies in countries that implement the EU Web Accessibility Directive must publish a statement with set contents. For what the ADA asks of a business site in general, read ADA compliant website: what the law asks.
This is general information, not legal advice. For your own situation, ask a lawyer.
