What is GIGW 3.0?

India's standard for government websites — and the reason automated scans are not enough to pass it.

What is GIGW 3.0?

GIGW 3.0 is the Guidelines for Indian Government Websites, issued by the National Informatics Centre. It sets standards for government websites and applications across accessibility, usability, content quality, security and compliance, and adopts WCAG 2.1 Level AA as its accessibility basis.

Why it matters commercially

For public bodies it is the operative standard, and accessibility obligations under the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act point to it. For vendors, demonstrable GIGW capability is frequently a tender qualifier rather than a differentiator.

Compliance is cheap when designed in and expensive when retrofitted, because it touches templates, components and content rather than a settings page.

Automated scans do not prove compliance

Automated tools detect only the machine-testable subset of accessibility failures. Whether alternative text is meaningful, whether focus order makes sense, whether a screen reader user can actually complete the task — these need manual testing.

Sites that pass a scan and remain unusable with a screen reader are common, which is why a credible audit includes keyboard and screen reader testing.