# Standards packs — WCAG core + pluggable country standards ultra11y's engine is keyed on **WCAG 2.2 Level AA** — the worldwide standard. Country accessibility standards ship as **standards packs**: small in-repo JSON files that map a national standard's criteria onto WCAG success criteria. The WCAG verdict is canonical and gated; a pack report is a *derived view* projected from the same audit. ## Model - **Core = WCAG 2.2 AA.** 55 success criteria (Level A + AA), the engine's canonical key. SC ids/titles/levels are derived from the W3C source (https://github.com/w3c/wcag). **French SC/guideline/principle titles are the official W3C AUTHORIZED translation** (https://www.w3.org/Translations/WCAG22-fr/, vendored at `scripts/vendor/wcag-2.2-fr.json`) baked into the dataset — `--lang fr` output cites the normative French wording, never a machine translation (the build fails if a core-AA title is missing). - **Packs = country standards.** Each pack (`src/data/standards/.json`) declares its own localized criteria and, per criterion, the WCAG SC ids it maps to. The engine audits WCAG; `derivePackResults` projects that onto the pack's criteria with the same NC-dominates rule. A pack carries **no** engine rules or automatability — only the mapping. - **The SC universe backs validation and scoping.** Alongside the AA core the engine ships the full WCAG 2.x SC universe (every real SC at every level, plus the removed ones, from the same vendored W3C source). A pack criterion may legitimately map to a real out-of-core SC (an AAA criterion, or the removed `4.1.1`): validation accepts it with a warning, and a criterion whose mapping is ENTIRELY out-of-core derives as **out of engine scope** — status `manual` with a dedicated justification (never a silent NA). Shipped example: **RGAA 8.1** (doctype → the removed 4.1.1). A well-formed id that never existed (`9.9.9`) is rejected outright. See `references/packs.md`. - **Pack locales ≠ the CLI's `Lang`.** A pack's `LocaleString`s may carry any BCP-47-ish tag (`pt-BR`, `nl-BE`…) — vocabulary and locales are decoupled from the CLI's own `--lang fr|en` UI frame (whose `auto` default resolves conversation → repo `` → the pack's `defaultLocale` → English). ## Using a pack `--standard ` re-keys the output of `report`, `prd`, `criteria`, `check` and `verify`. The default is the WCAG core. ``` node scripts/ultra11y.mjs report --in audits/audit-latest.json --standard rgaa # → audits/rgaa-YYYY-MM-DD.md node scripts/ultra11y.mjs criteria --standard rgaa --theme 1 # a pack theme node scripts/ultra11y.mjs criteria --standard rgaa 8.3 # one pack criterion (shows its WCAG SCs) node scripts/ultra11y.mjs check --report audits/rgaa-YYYY-MM-DD.md --standard rgaa node scripts/ultra11y.mjs criteria --standard rgaa --glossary lien # a term the standard DEFINES node scripts/ultra11y.mjs criteria --standard wcag --glossary "large scale" # the core defines its own terms too ``` An unknown `--standard` value errors out (never a silent fallback to WCAG). **The core carries its own text, in both languages.** Each WCAG success criterion ships its normative wording verbatim (exceptions and notes kept as labelled lines), the terms WCAG defines, and the terms each criterion's wording links to. So `criteria 1.4.3` shows the 4.5:1 requirement and its three exceptions rather than only naming the criterion — the same fidelity the RGAA pack has always had for its own criteria. `--lang fr` resolves the **W3C authorized French translation** throughout: the title, the requirement prose, and the glossary. There is no half-translated state where a French heading sits over English requirements — the build fails rather than ship one. The two W3C pages do not share definition slugs (the French page pluralizes many, and renames a few), so each language keeps its own term list and its own glossary keys; a build guard rejects any citation that does not resolve in its own language. Over MCP the same data is `ultra11y_criteria` and `std://wcag/criteria/1.4.3`; see `references/mcp.md`. ## Auditor vocabulary The `prd` **auditor block** (the default output) and the **GitHub issues** it files are rendered with the **active standard's own vocabulary** — the nouns an auditor of that standard reads. A pack declares them under an optional `vocabulary` object (`LocaleString`s): | term | RGAA (fr) | WCAG core (en) | fallback | |---|---|---|---| | `theme` | Thématique | Principle · Guideline | Theme | | `criterion` | Critère | Success criterion | Criterion | | `test` | Test | Technique | Test | | `conformant` | Conforme (C) | Pass | Conformant | | `nonConformant` | Non conforme (NC) | Fail | Non-conformant | | `notApplicable` | Non applicable (NA) | Not applicable | Not applicable | | `auditorHeading` | Critère d'accessibilité | Accessibility criterion | Accessibility criterion | Every field is optional: what a pack omits falls back to a generic default, the WCAG core keeps its own built-in set (it is not a pack), and `--lang fr|en` picks the locale. So a new country pack ships its terminology and the auditor output speaks its language with **no engine change** — the modular seam that makes `prd` work for each country, not just France. Resolution lives in `src/standards/vocabulary.ts`; the RGAA terms are set in `scripts/build-pack-rgaa.mjs`. ## Shipped packs - **RGAA 4.1.2** (`--standard rgaa`) — France, © DINUM, Licence Ouverte / Etalab 2.0. 13 themes, 106 criteria, French. The flagship example pack. ## International equivalence (version-accurate) Several standards incorporate WCAG by reference, but **not all at the same version** — state the right one rather than blanket-claiming 2.2: - **Section 508** (US, revised 2018) incorporates **WCAG 2.0 Level AA** for web content. - **EN 301 549** (EU): v3.2.1 references **WCAG 2.1**; v4 (2024+) references **WCAG 2.2**. - **AODA** (Ontario, Canada) references **WCAG 2.0 AA**. A WCAG 2.2 AA audit therefore covers the web requirements of these standards at their respective WCAG versions; a country pack adds that standard's own numbering and wording. ## Adding your country Two ways, depending on whether you want it shipped or just plugged locally: - **Built-in (shipped):** drop a pack JSON under `src/data/standards/`, register it in `src/standards/registry.ts`, add a test, and open a PR. The full authoring contract (pack schema, locale rules, licence requirements, the WCAG-SC mapping, tests) is in **`../../CONTRIBUTING.md`**. - **Runtime (no rebuild):** author the pack JSON, gate it with `pack check`, and load it with `--pack ./pack.json` (or a `.ultra11yrc.json`). An external standard or rule source can be **AI-ingested** into a pack + implementation guidance and validated by the same gate — see **`packs.md`** and **`guidance.md`**.