WCAG 2.2 Demo SuiteParsing
Removed from WCAG 2.2. This criterion required elements to have complete start and end tags, be nested correctly, avoid duplicate attributes, and have unique IDs. It is retained here as an explainer, not as a demo, and does not count toward conformance.
Removed from WCAG 2.2
This criterion is obsolete. It does not count toward conformance and must not be evaluated in a WCAG 2.2 audit. It is documented here so you recognise it in older reports and older tooling output.
Who this affects
Historically, screen reader users on browsers that could not recover from malformed HTML. Modern browsers and assistive technologies all use the same standardised HTML parsing and error-recovery algorithm, so the criterion no longer described a real barrier.
How to test it
Not applicable — do not evaluate this criterion in a WCAG 2.2 audit. Note that genuine parsing problems that do cause harm, such as duplicate IDs breaking a label association, are already failures of 1.3.1 or 4.1.2.
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Automated
Validators still report these issues, and they remain worth fixing as code quality. They are simply no longer a WCAG conformance requirement in their own right.
Relevant axe rules:
duplicate-id-aria
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Keyboard
Unplug the mouse. Move through the page with Tab, Shift+Tab, Enter, Space and the arrow keys. See the keyboard testing script.
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Screen reader
Listen to both examples with NVDA, JAWS, VoiceOver or TalkBack and compare what is announced. See the screen reader cheat sheets.
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Visual
Zoom to 200% and 400%, narrow the viewport to 320 px, and apply the text-spacing overrides. See the visual testing procedures.
Related criteria
In the specification
- Understanding 4.1.1 Parsing — the W3C explanation, intent and exceptions
- 4.1.1 in the WCAG 2.2 Recommendation — the normative wording