What WCAG 2.2 AA actually means for refund-protection products

The European Accessibility Act applies in mid-2025; the first EU pilot pulls Claimful into the deadline window. We target WCAG 2.2 AA on consumer-facing surfaces before the date Claimful needs it. The standard governs what a usable surface looks like across vision, motor, cognitive, and auditory disability profiles.

The surfaces in scope

Three surfaces are consumer-facing: the embedded widget, the consumer portal at claimful.claims, and the marketing site at claimful.ai. Each one carries the standard. The internal ops console is employee-facing and held at WCAG 2.1 AA out of scope for the regulation.

What changed from 2.1 to 2.2

Several new success criteria. Target size is now 24 by 24 CSS pixels minimum, with documented exceptions for inline elements. Dragging movements need a single-pointer alternative. Authentication flows cannot require a memorized cognitive function unless an alternative is offered. Focus appearance has stricter contrast requirements.

How we test it

Axe-core runs on every PR via Playwright; the violation list is consolidated into the PR comment thread so the diff is visible at review time. Reduced-motion preference disables all non-essential animations on consumer surfaces. Dark-mode contrast is checked on every component pair. Lighthouse SEO and accessibility scores have CI gates that block PRs below the floor.

Where the standard ends

Automated tests catch the syntactic issues. They don't catch a confusing copy decision, an unclear error message, or a hostile interaction pattern. The manual screen-reader matrix and the end-to-end keyboard navigation review are the parts where a human has to do the work. We schedule those reviews on the editorial calendar.