How do YOU pronounce WCAG?
Expanding on accessibility guidelines
When it comes to web accessibility, our own “building regulations” are the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines—the set of international standards that spell out how to make a digital experience usable for everyone. Lovely stuff, but that title is hardly something you can rattle off in a hallway chat. So, as with every unwieldy name, it gets trimmed—only no‑one can quite agree how.
They are produced by the World Wide Web Consortium, which is itself rather a lot, but I have only ever heard it pronounced as "W-3-C".
I hear at least three pronunciations for WCAG:
- “W‑C‑A‑G” – the strict, letter‑by‑letter recital. Efficient, if a tad robotic.
- “W‑CAG” – dropping one letter to keep the rhythm snappy.
- “Woo‑CAG” – the jazz‑hands version; silly to some, memorable to others.
I’m curious: which camp are you in?
To anyone still saying the full Web Content Accessibility Guidelines every single time… you deserve a medal and a glass of water!
