Web Access Centre Blog

On Monday the HTML 5 Working Group, part of the World Wide Web Consortium, published the HTML Design Principles document.

HTML 5 is the fifth major revision of the core language of the World Wide Web, HTML. This is no small task and also one that has attracted a lot of debate over the last few months. Hardly surprising as HTML is the workhorse of the web after all. In the W3C’s own words “this document describes the set of guiding principles used by the HTML Working Group for the development of HTML5. The principles offer guidance for the design of HTML in the areas of compatibility, utility and interoperability” as well as universal access.

I’m pleased to see that one of the five principles discussed is universal access, something that is essential for any website. In this document universal access includes media independence, support for world languages and accessibility. This ties neatly into three keys sets of guidance for universal web design: the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, Internationalisation and Mobile Web Best Practices.

The HTML 5 Design Principles document is intended to support the HTML 5 Editor’s Draft aiming to capture consensus and agreement on the design approach of HTML 5. W3C are interested in hearing your thoughts which can be posted via the HTML 5 mailing list.

I’m at the World Wide Web Consortium Technical Plenary which is held during the W3C working groups annual meetings week, a time when we gather to have face-to-face meetings to discuss the work we are doing (I’m in the Education and Outreach Working Group in the Web Accessibility Initiative.

Being an organisation that sets standards for the web it’s unsurprising that one of the lightning talks, given by TV Raman from Google, touched upon the very essence of what W3C do and asked the question what makes standards succeed?

Whether you’re into web accessibility, mobile best practice, internationalisation or software accessibility (or a combination of the above) you’ll be dealing with standards and their implementation every day. Raman was very clear in saying “standards that work are ones that allow you to build on what you have done” and suggested the following are essential ingredients:

• Adaptation within the community
• Adaptation outside the target community
• Adaptation by follow-on work

We all bring something to the table whether you are a designer, developer, content editor, marketing person, manager, advocate, consultant, trainer the list goes on. But I’m curious to know, what do you think makes standards succeed?

Leave a comment and let us know what you think.

We’ve been talking to our friends in India and as a result Techshare is going East! Breaking the Barriers is the first ever accessibility conference-cum-exhibition bringing the entire ecosystem; the government, the
corporates, the NGOs, the disabled, the product companies, and the education providers under one roof.

Techshare India 2008 will be held on 4th and 5th February, 2008 at New Delhi, India. Continue Reading »

Structure is important.

A house wouldn’t be a house without structure - it’d be a pile of bricks and mortar, with some windows and doors.

Now, while you can’t have a house without structure, unfortunately, you can build a web page without any structure.

It’s not hugely useful though, so to help you make sure your pages are useful to your users, here’s our How To Do Headings guide.

Continue Reading »

The Web Accessibility Initiative have just published a set of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 presentation materials.

The presentation “slides” and extensive notes are designed for presenters to use for their own presentations and is also available for anyone who wants to learn about WCAG 2.0. Topics covered are:

• the benefits of WCAG 2.0
• shortcuts for using WCAG 2.0
• how it differs from WCAG 1.0
• related topics

The About WCAG 2.0 presentation is available in “Presentation format” (compatible with Microsoft PowerPoint, Open Office Impress, and some other presentation software) or “Web format” (HTML/CSS) the presentation, notes and instructions can be downloaded from the WAI site.