The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines - the WCAG. What a mouthfull! We look at it as the bible, the rule book by which the game is being played. It has about 87 success criteria! That's 87 main rules to play by, and a lot more when you consider all the sub sections and specific cases.
Football (soccer) has 17 rules. Baseball takes the lead with over 200 separate rules, regulations, and comments covering all aspects of the gameplay. Cricket, the game I never understood myself, has over 80 main laws, but a lot more interpretations and instructions.
Each of these rule books spans several hundred pages.
Why do we need so many standards and rules?
Imagine playing any of these sports without rules. Anarchy and chaos! How would you know what's legal and what not? Who's winning? How do you keep score? What's a goal and what's a fault?
The point is, we need rules to play the game and we need the WCAG to guide us. But don't take it as the bible, use it as a playbook, a strategic resource.
The rule books for sports are there to ensure fair play and level the playing field. The WCAG does the same. It's there to help you make web content accessible to everyone. Without these rules in place, the web would be a chaotic landscape where accessibility is an afterthought, if it existed at all.