Two words that are often confused: conformance and compliance. What do they mean?

Conform to a standard

When something conforms to a standard, it “meets” or “satisfies” specific requirements in a standard.

For instance, in the case of WCAG, those requirements include that:

• the requirements in a specific Level are met (eg Level A or Level AA).
• the claim is about full pages only, not parts of them (eg not components).
• technologies are only used in accessibility-supported ways, or there must be alternatives with technologies that are (in that case, those technologies may not interfere by having unstoppable audio (1.4.2), keyboard traps (2.1.2), unstoppable moving content (2.2.2), or flashes (2.3.1).

Additionally, to claim conformance on a page that is part of a process, every other page in that process must also be conformant.

Examples:

• “this website conforms with WCAG”.
• “this website meets the 55 WCAG success criteria of WCAG 2”.

Examples of what wouldn't make sense:

• “this component conforms with WCAG” (it cannot, it is not a full page)
• “this website complies with WCAG” (see compliance below).

How conformance in WCAG works is likely to change in WCAG 3, which is still many years from being released. It's one of the things we're currently discussing on in the Working Group.

Comply with a regulation

Then compliance (see also: the Muse song). Organisations can comply with regulation, for instance the laws and regulations that EU Member States adopted following Directive (EU) 2019/882, the European Accessibility Act.

Sometimes they show that they do, by showing that they conform to a standard. The European Commission sometimes commissions standards for this very purpose, via “standardisation requests”. For instance, the next update to EN 301 549, currently in the works, was mandated under M/587. It is likely to become what provides “presumption of conformity with the essential requirements” for the requirements of the European Accessibility Act, once published in the Official Journal of the European Union.

Other languages

In Dutch, we speak of “conformeren aan een standaard” (conform to a standard) and “naleven van een wet” (comply with a law).

In German, conformance and compliance are both called “Konformität”. One could distinguish between “Standardkonformität” (with a standard) and “Gesetzeskonformität“ (with a law).

That's it, I hope this post helps folks. More translations welcomed!

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Originally posted as Conformance vs compliance, accessibility standards edition on Hidde's blog.

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