Web Access Centre Blog

The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) announced today that the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG 2.0) have become a full W3C Standard.

This is great news and something many in the accessibility world have been waiting for for a long time. Version one of the guidelines were released in 1999, which is a long time in anyone’s book, but in “web years” it’s a very long time!

Much has changed on the web since 1999 and WCAG 2.0 seeks to address many of the new accessibility challenges facing the web today. As a document, it’s much more flexible and testable than WCAG 1.0 and covers more than just W3C Technologies. Proprietary technologies such as PDFs and Flash etc are also covered.

The techniques document for WCAG 2.0 is also updateable which should help the guidelines move with technology, and not become out of date as quickly as WCAG 1.0 did.

As always, guidelines cannot guarantee accessibility unless they are understood and applied correctly, but they can go a long way towards helping developers and content editors get things right. Having a modern, stable version of the guidelines for today’s web is only a good thing.

Further Reading

• Full W3C Press Release
• WCAG 2.0 at a Glance
• The WCAG 2.0 Documents
• WCAG 2.0 Guidelines
• How to Meet WCAG 2.0: Customisable Quick Reference
• Understanding WCAG 2.0
• Techniques for WCAG 2.0
• How to Update Your Web Site from WCAG 1.0 to WCAG 2.0
• WCAG 2.0 Resources - The Web Standards Project
• WCAG 2.0 is official - but is that all you need to make a site accessible?

The Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (AUWG) published a Working Draft of the Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG) 2.0 yesterday.

The following is taken from the email sent to the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) Interest Group:

ATAG defines how authoring tools should help Web developers produce Web content that is accessible and conforms to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). It also defines how to make authoring tools accessible so that people with disabilities can use the tools. An overview of ATAG is available for those who are new to the guidelines.

In this update, Part A, which addresses authoring tool user interface accessibility, is refocused. Part B is restructured to replace the concept of “Web Content Accessibility Benchmark” with a more straightforward relationship with WCAG 2.0. The Working Group welcomes feedback on these changes.

The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) encourages you to review the updated ATAG 2.0 documents and submit comments on any issues that you think could present a barrier to future adoption and implementation of ATAG 2.0. Please send comments by 6th January 2009 to the comment list, which is publicly archived.

Further Reading

• Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (AUWG)
• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0
• Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
• Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) Interest Group
• How WAI Develops Accessibility Guidelines through the W3C Process

So the big news of this week wasn’t the result of the US Election, it was the news that the technical material of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG 2.0) has been completed and real world example implementations have been provided for all of the guidelines / success criteria. This is great news and means that WCAG 2.0 has now moved on to being a W3C Proposed Recommendation.

The next, and final stage for WCAG 2.0, is final publication which is expected to happen in December 2008. We will then have a modern, stable set of guidelines to reference as an alternative to the ageing WCAG 1.0.

Further Reading

• Overview of the WCAG 2.0 documents
• Latest news from the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)

Everybody loves a good analogy and surprise surprise I’m no different! I want to revisit an issue that I’m sure has been raised numerous times before – the differences between guidelines and user testing and the benefits of each. Now feels like an important time to talk about this again given the imminent release of the next version of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0). At the recent Accessibility 2.0 conference held by AbilityNet, there was also some talk of how useful guidelines actually were compared to user testing, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to put my opinion out there.

So, with all that in mind, let’s talk about food instead!

Continue Reading »

Then look no further. We’re running two half day courses Thursday June 26th on Transitioning your website from WCAG 1.0 to WCAG 2.0 and Hidden Barriers to accessibility.

Transitioning from WCAG 1.0 to WCAG 2.0 - With WCAG 2.0 nearing completion now is the perfect time to get ahead of the game and get started. This practical course is your WCAG 2.0 starter kit and looks at the new guidelines, what’s changed, what’s new, supporting resources and tools as well as implementation advice. The course aims to enable and inform web managers, designers and developers, who have been working with WCAG 1.0 on how to start using WCAG 2.0.

Hidden Barriers to accessibility - While guidelines are designed to do just that, guide, developing accessible websites is about understanding your user and their needs. This technical course is designed to enable website designers, developers and programmers to identify and cure some common, but less obvious accessibility problems on their web sites such as TITLE text, hidden text, same page links and placeholder text (to name a few).

These courses go beyond standard accessibility advice and look into the knottier aspects of accessibility so you can walk away with some practical and implementable solutions for your web sites.

Find out more and sign up.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) has just published some great resources on the cross overs between the mobile web and accessibility. The good news is that reading through these you’ll see how designing with accessibility in mind makes your site work much better on mobile devices and that if you follow mobile web best practices you will already be enhancing the web accessibility of your site. Yet another nugget to add to the business case for web accessibility or mobile web best practices. This really does show how standards are mutually supportive and work together killing two birds with one stone:

• Web Content Accessibility and Mobile Web: Making a Web Site Accessible Both for People with Disabilities and for Mobile Devices
• Relationship Between Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0 and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines First Public Working Draft

It doesn’t stop there however. There is also a strong cross over between mobile web best practices, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and internationalisation. Watch this space as I’ll be publishing an article soon that looks at the cross overs between all three.

Finally a nod in the direction of Alan Chuter who worked so hard on getting these drafts together.

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group has been hard at work over the last few months to review comments submitted in response to thier previous Last Call. Below are the details of the next Last Call, how you can provide feedback and information about other documents that have also been updated:

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Working Group invites you to review the second WCAG 2.0 Last Call Working Draft published on 11 December 2007. WCAG 2.0 explains how to make Web sites, applications, and other content accessible to people with disabilities. Please submit any comments on the second WCAG 2.0 Last Call Working Draft by 1 February 2008.

This second WCAG 2.0 Last Call Working Draft is provided for public review of the document now that it has all resolutions from previous comments incorporated. The WCAG Working Group hopes that it has resolved all substantive issues with this draft, and looks forward to progressing to the next stages in completing WCAG 2.0. The next stages are described in How WAI Develops Accessibility Guidelines through the W3C Process.

The different WCAG 2.0 documents that the WCAG Working Group updated are introduced in Overview of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 Documents.

A key tool for reviewing and working with WCAG 2.0 documents is WCAG 2.0 Quick Reference.

For a summary of issues, revisions, and rationales on WCAG 2.0 Working Drafts - such as coverage of cognitive disabilities and testability - see Issues and Changes to WCAG 2.0.

Note that the navigation between the documents is changed in these drafts. Now each topic in “Understanding WCAG 2.0″ and “Techniques for WCAG 2.0″ is in a separate small Web page.

When you review the updated documents, if there are any significant additional issues that you feel could present a barrier to adoption and implementation of WCAG 2.0, please submit comments by Friday 1 February 2008. Please use the comment form or the email address provided in Instructions for Commenting on WCAG 2.0 Documents.

Comments in support of progressing WCAG 2.0 to the next stages are also welcome.

WCAG 2.0 is part of a series of accessibility guidelines/standards developed by WAI, which are listed in WAI Guidelines and Techniques.

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.

In June 5th of this year Shawn Henry from the World Wide Web (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) presented on “What’s new, WCAG 2.0, and current issues” hosted by RNIB in London. Shawn gave a great overview of what is happening with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2 (WCAG 2.0) as well as spent some time answering some really interesting questions from the audience.

It’s taken a bit of time to get the transcript finalised (see an earlier post on the trials and tribulations of podcast transcription) but we’re there now. A huge thank you to Stuart Colville of Muffin Research who helped organise the even and the University of Westminster where it was held.

What follows is a transcript of the talk.

Continue Reading »

Latest news from the Web Accessibility Initiative about progress of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0:

Here is Here is a brief update on WCAG 2.0 work to let you know how things are coming along since the May 2007 Working Draft release.

The WCAG Working Group received many constructive comments on the May 2007 WCAG 2.0 Working Draft. They separated the comments into about 450 issues, ranging from minor edits to technical issues. In the first two weeks of July, the Working Group had eight half-day worksessions where they addressed about 150 of those issues and started work on another 100. It will likely take 3 to 4 months to address all of the issues and prepare the next draft.

The Working Group will respond to each comment. Once the comments have been addressed, the Working Group plans to publish a second WCAG 2.0 Last Call Working Draft to provide for review of the completed edits before moving on to the next stages. The next stages are described in How WAI Develops Accessibility Guidelines through the W3C Process.

Additional information and links are available in the WCAG 2 FAQ under:
- 17 May 2007 Working Drafts
- Update July 2007

Questions such as “What are the different WCAG 2.0 documents?”, “When will WCAG 2.0 be done?” and “How is WCAG 2.0 different from WCAG 1.0?” are also answered in the WCAG 2 FAQ