WCAG 3.0 is an active W3C Working Draft in development by the AGWG. Requirements, assertions, the conformance model and reporting tiers are still being developed and may change. The latest published draft is the 10 September 2026 Working Draft; this site follows the editors’ draft, which also includes exploratory provisions.
Instructions and help do not depend on shape, colour, size, visual location, orientation or sound to make sense - 'the round button on the right' has to work for someone who cannot see it.
Why It Matters
Directions given purely by appearance or position are unusable by screen reader users, and often by people with colour vision deficiencies or those using a reflowed, magnified layout.
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Examples from the Draft
Worked examples the W3C editors wrote into the provision itself, not
examples invented here.
Sensory characteristics include but are not limited to shape, color, size, visual location, orientation, or sound.
For each reference to shape, size, or position of an object:
Check that the reference includes additional information that allows the item to be located and identified without any knowledge of its shape, size, or relative position.
Expected results
#1 is true.
W3C Working Group Status
W3C Maturity Status:developing
Track / Group:help-and-feedback
The draft records no open editors' notes on this provision.
W3C Threads on This Provision
1 GitHub thread carrying 0 comments,
fetched from w3c/wcag3 by the
tracker. Titles, numbers and states are the threads' own.
Nobody has read these threads and written up the positions yet, so
only the threads themselves are listed.
Instructions and help do not rely on sensory characteristics.
:::example
Sensory characteristics include but are not limited to shape, color, size, visual location, orientation, or sound.
:::