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Join the Movement: Help shape the Children’s Digital Wellbeing Framework.
A modular, evidence-based roadmap to demonstrate that your product is safe, responsible, and supportive of child development.
What is the CDWF Accreditation?
What is the CDWF Accreditation?
The Children’s Digital Wellbeing Framework (CDWF) Accreditation is a structured assessment for digital products and teams that create experiences for children. It is designed to help industry demonstrate that their products are:
Safe, age-appropriate and responsible by design
Supportive of children’s wellbeing, learning and development
Transparent and trustworthy in their use of data, monetisation and AI
The accreditation was developed with child development specialists, safeguarding experts, technologists and industry practitioners. It aims to give product teams a clear, practical roadmap for building better digital products for children, while providing parents, educators and regulators with a trusted signal of quality.
There are two routes:
Product accreditation – for specific content, apps, games or services
Person/team accreditation – for individuals or teams who lead responsible, child-centred digital design in their organisations
What Does The Accreditation Look At?
The product route uses a modular workbook that assesses the product across several domains:
Floor requirements (baseline safety and responsibility). These are “must-have” safeguards that any accredited product must meet. Questions cover:
Reporting and blocking tools
Data minimisation and privacy
Avoidance of dark patterns and coercive UX
Security, accessibility and representation
Responsible metrics and commercial transparency
Consent, age-assurance and session structure
Evidence of stakeholder involvement (including children).
Any “No” on a floor requirement results in an automatic fail until remediated.
Online guardrails (if the product includes social/networked features) This domain is only applied when relevant and looks at:
Communication safety, blocking and reporting
Moderation of user-generated content
Profile privacy and location protection
Guardian visibility and controls
Age-related design Products are assessed against guidance aligned to the target age band (e.g. 0–2, 3–5, 6–9, 10–13, 13+). This covers:
Agency and decision-making with appropriate guardrails
Emotional safety and regulation support
Digital literacy and awareness of persuasion/AI
Balance with offline life
Adult involvement and co-use
Community norms and culture
AI-specific risks and safeguards where applicable
Activity-specific domains. Depending on what the product actually does, one or more of the following activity sheets are included in the overall score:
Screen-based content (video/publishing)
Solitary play
Multiplayer
Online communication
Educational
VR/AR
Each activity sheet contains criteria and weighted scores tailored to that mode of engagement.
AI guardrails (if AI is present). When the product uses AI – for personalisation, tutoring, chat, or content generation – additional criteria are applied, including:
Disclosure that the system is non-human
Guardrails around emotional dependency and relational claims
Cognitive safeguards (supporting effort rather than replacing it)
Bias, accuracy and red-teaming expectations
Hard fail register. Some conditions automatically disqualify a product, even if scores are high elsewhere (for example: deliberate targeting of children with harmful content, undisclosed high-risk data practices, or AI use that is incompatible with wellbeing).
How the scoring works
Each domain uses 0–5 scoring on individual criteria, with different weights depending on importance.
Domains have threshold scores (typically 60%) that must be met.
The overall product needs to:
Pass all floor requirements
Have no hard fails
Achieve at least 70% overall, with each included domain at or above its threshold
Accreditation may be tiered (e.g. “Accredited”, “Advanced”, “Exemplary”) depending on the final score and how many domains exceed their baseline thresholds.
What Is Expected From Product Teams
To complete an accreditation, product teams are asked to:
Identify the product’s primary activity type(s) and target age band(s).
Provide basic product and version information.
Complete the relevant workbook sheets (floor requirements, applicable activities, age-related design, online/AI guardrails as relevant).
Provide evidence references (e.g. design documentation, policies, UX flows, moderated logs, test reports) against each criterion where required.
Nominate a lead contact for follow-up queries and, if needed, walk through the product in a live demo or test environment.
The workbook is designed to be usable by a cross-functional team (product management, design, engineering, safeguarding/compliance). Smaller studios can still participate but may need to allocate time to documenting practices that previously lived informally in people’s heads.
What Does Industry Gain?
For organisations, CDWF Accreditation can:
Provide a trusted external signal of quality and child-centred design.
De-risk launches and compliance conversations by showing structured consideration of safety, privacy and wellbeing.
Support internal alignment around shared standards instead of ad-hoc, team-by-team interpretations.
Help identify concrete, prioritised improvements (where scores are lower or thresholds not met).
Differentiate products in parent/educator channels, app stores, procurement frameworks, and partnership discussions.
For teams, the person/team route can:
Recognise and formalise the role of child-centred design and safeguarding expertise.
Support professional development pathways (e.g. “accredited practitioner” roles).
Increase confidence when advising colleagues or interacting with external stakeholders.
Ficticious Worked Examples
StoryStream Kids
StoryStream Kids
Product type: Screen-based content app (video and interactive storybooks)
Target age band: 3–5 years
Features: Curated library, simple personalisation (favourite characters), no user-generated content, no chat, optional subscription.
Assessment route
Floor requirements: Required
Online guardrails: Not applicable (no networking)
Activity tabs: Screen-based content (primary), Educational (secondary, where relevant)
Age-related design: 3–5 guidance
AI guardrails: Not applicable (rules-based personalisation only)
Example outcomes (illustrative)
Floor requirements: Pass
Strong data minimisation (no unnecessary personal data).
No dark patterns; clear, age-appropriate subscription explanation.
Accessible UI with caption options and basic inclusion checks.
Screen-based content domain: High score
Content is developmentally appropriate for 3–5, with co-viewing prompts for caregivers.
Autoplay is limited; natural stopping points are built into episodes.
Educational domain: Moderate score
Stories integrate simple literacy and emotional vocabulary.
Scope to improve explicit scaffolding of learning goals and progress tracking.
Age-related design (3–5): High score
Strong focus on emotional safety, predictable structures, clear feedback.
Good support for adult mediation, including a “grown-ups” area with conversation prompts.
Overall result (illustrative):
Overall score: 82%
Domain thresholds met; no hard fails
Accreditation tier: “Accredited – Advanced”
What the output might look like to industry and parents:
Age band endorsed: 3–5
Domains shown as icons: Safety & Privacy (strong), Wellbeing & Balance (strong), Learning & Skills (good), Inclusion & Representation (good).
Short narrative: “StoryStream Kids offers curated, age-appropriate stories with limited autoplay and strong privacy protections. Best used with periodic co-viewing for richer learning conversations.”
GalaxyQuest Online
GalaxyQuest Online
Product type: Multiplayer online game with social chat
Target age band: 10–13 years
Features: Real-time multiplayer, text and emoji chat, cosmetics store with in-app purchases, ranked leaderboards, AI-driven matchmaking and content recommendations.
Assessment route
Floor requirements: Required
Online guardrails: Included (networked features present)
Activity tabs: Multiplayer, Online communication; Screen-based content (secondary)
Age-related design: 10–13 guidance
AI guardrails: Included (AI matchmaking and recommendations)
Example outcomes (illustrative)
Floor requirements: Conditional pass after remediation
Initial assessment flags “Responsible metrics” and “Commercial transparency” as weak: monetisation is heavily time-limited and leaderboard rewards drive extended play.
Team adjusts design: clearer spending explanations, reduced pressure mechanics, and better session structure prompts.
Online guardrails: Mixed score
Strong blocking/reporting tools and active moderation.
Profiles private by default, but some ambiguity around how friend suggestions are generated.
Location data fully protected.
Improvement opportunity: more parent-friendly explanations of online features and risks.
Multiplayer / Online communication domains: Moderate score
Clear community rules and graduated enforcement.
Leaderboards exist but are redesigned to reduce shaming dynamics (no public naming of lowest-ranked players, emphasised team-based goals).
AI guardrails: Mixed score
AI matchmaking is disclosed in the privacy policy but not clearly explained in-product.
No relational AI chat bots, but recommendation systems are tuned largely around engagement.
Following review, the team commits to:
Clearer in-product disclosure of AI usage.
Re-balancing algorithms to prioritise wellbeing metrics (e.g. variety, break prompts) over pure time spent.
Age-related design (10–13): Mixed to good
Good recognition of emerging autonomy and social dynamics.
Some red flags around over-competitive structures and pressure to spend, which are partially mitigated in post-assessment revisions.
Overall result (illustrative):
First assessment: Fails due to a hard fail related to commercial pressure and missing clarity on AI-driven recommendations.
After changes and re-assessment:
Overall score: 74%
Domain thresholds met; hard fail resolved through design changes and updated policies
Accreditation tier: “Accredited – Core”
What the output might look like to industry and parents:
Age band endorsed: 10–13
Domains shown as icons: Safety & Privacy (strong), Wellbeing & Balance (adequate), Learning & Skills (not primary focus), Inclusion & Representation (good).
Short narrative: “GalaxyQuest Online provides moderated multiplayer play with strong blocking and reporting tools. Competitive features and in-app purchases are present; we recommend using built-in parental controls and discussing spending rules and playtime boundaries.”
Accreditation Routes
This form is for organisations seeking CDWF accreditation for a digital product or content service.
This form is for individuals, teams, or organisations seeking CDWF practitioner accreditation — demonstrating that the professionals who design, build, and manage children's digital products have the knowledge and values to do so responsibly.
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