Accessibility conformance, declared honestly.
No tool can prove a website is accessible — the EU Accessibility Act knows it: conformance is a manufacturer self-declaration, not a scanner's stamp. Watchdog proves what fails, pre-fills those criteria, and blocks you from marking them passed without a recorded reason. The conformance claim is yours, signed by a named person. We measure; you declare. We never certify.
A clean automated result is necessary, not sufficient — a green Watchdog score is never a conformance claim.
Accessibility Conformance Declaration
Tooling can only disprove conformance — never prove it. The claims rest on the declarant, not on Watchdog.
What the EU Accessibility Act actually asks of you.
In force 28 June 2025
The EAA (Directive 2019/882) requires covered digital products and services to conform; for the web that means EN 301 549, which currently points at WCAG 2.1 AA and is moving to 2.2 AA. Conformance is established by a manufacturer's self-declaration — you are the declarant. There is no certificate to buy, and no scanner's green tick discharges the obligation.
The honest truth most accessibility tools won't tell you
"One script = compliant" overlay widgets are rejected by the disability community and EU regulators. Automated checks cover roughly a third of WCAG. No tool is accepted as proof of conformance under the EAA — none. A tool can prove a failure; conformance requires manual evaluation (WCAG-EM 1.0) and a human declaration.
Four tiers — what a tool can do, and where a human must.
Tool-automated
The machine proves failures — alt text, labels, page language, name/role/value. A failure is real: pre-set to Fail, gates sign-off.
Evidence-assisted
Needs rendered runtime + assistive tech — contrast, focus order, reflow, keyboard traps. With the framework on, Watchdog renders your UI in a sandboxed headless browser and runs axe-core, pre-filling criteria with double-render-verified evidence. For apps that can't render statically, the Runtime Evidence module boots the whole app from its own declared setup in an isolated sandbox — you change nothing. All advisory — it never moves your CAI.
Human judgement
Meaning no tool decides — is the alt text equivalent? Is the error message clear? You judge it, optionally with an AI-drafted note you review.
Non-web (EN 301 549)
Hardware, two-way voice, video, documents, support. Beyond Watchdog's reach — disclosed as pure human attestation, never dressed up.
The integrity keystone: we won't let you pass what we caught failing.
The failure-gate
A caught failure pre-sets the criterion to Fail and locks it; marking it Pass requires a written justification, reproduced in full in the Integrity section of the artifact.
Provenance on every line
Every verdict states how it was reached: tool-verified / evidence-assisted / AI-drafted-and-reviewed / human attestation.
The workflow.
Scan
The accessibility lens assesses the machine-checkable surface of WCAG 2.2 AA + 2.1 AA and reports an honest coverage map — naming the exact criteria it could and couldn't evaluate. A partial signal, stated as one.
Self-assess & evidence
A signed-in member sets the WCAG-EM scope and works every criterion; the gate enforces honesty; supporting documents (a manual test report, a pentest) attach with a hash.
Sign
A named declarant signs. The declaration freezes into immutable, tamper-evident bytes — a SHA-256 you can re-verify. You may honestly conclude "does not fully conform."
Export, require & keep current
Download the ACR/VPAT with the evidence travelling inside it; optionally bind a contract profile; "Extend" re-issues for the next scan, re-running the gate.
Signing and the binding contract clause are business artifacts — activated on Assay.
Put it in the contract.
Watchdog Accessible Web Delivery — Conformance
- The delivered web product shall be assessed for accessibility (declared lens, binding)
- A current, signed accessibility conformance self-declaration shall exist for the accepted run
- Tooling gates the floor; a named person signs the conformance claim Watchdog cannot make on their behalf
Opt-in. The readiness-only profile stays readiness-only — it never claims conformance.
Declare it honestly.
We measure; you declare. We never certify. · What we measure · Security & data