Web Access Centre Blog

Much has been said about the WCAG 2.0 Guidelines and the large amount of information bundled with it, with many people asking, “where do I start?”. When the draft WCAG 2.0 Guidelines were published for comment last year by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) this seemed to be a big talking point and one that got me thinking: what is the best way to be working with WCAG 2.0 and where do you start?

Now that a new a call for review has been announced for the updated WCAG 2.0 Working Draft I thought what better time than now to share a few thoughts on the second version of the guidelines.

Having worked with the second version of the Guidelines in my capacity as a consultant as well as having spoken to a number of designers, developers and policy makers I began to look at ways of getting the most out of WCAG 2.0 depending on what your role is. So here is a practical look at what to do when starting to adopt WCAG 2.0 and suggested approaches depending on whether you are a policy maker, developer, designer, project manager or site owner.

1. Understand the framework of WCAG 2.0

The first step is to understand what the framework for the guidance is. The WCAG 2.0 Guidelines are grouped under 4 Principles, (perceivable, operable, understandable and robust). Each guideline comes with one or more Success Criteria (formally checkpoints) which are statements describing how each of the guidelines can be tested and met, almost like a “test criterion” you could say. Each Success Criterion comes with suggested Techniques as well as Common Failures i.e. what not to do, which in my experience is as important as clarification of what to do.

So, putting the above into context, if you’re checking an issue in your site, look at the WCAG 2.0 Guideline(s) that relate to the issue, and see what the Success Criterion and recommended Techniques are. Taking “blinking content” as an example, which could include an animated image or Flash, the framework would look something like this:

• Guideline 2.2: “Provide users with disabilities enough time to read and use content”.
• Success Criteria 2.2.2: “Content does not blink for more than three seconds, or a method is available to stop all blinking content in the Web page”.
• Techniques: Create content that blinks for less than 3 seconds or, use a control (i.e. a button) in the page that stops the blinking content or, use blinking content that can be stopped by the user agent (for example a screen reader).
• Common Failure: using text-decoration:blink without a mechanism to stop it in less than three seconds.

A useful description of the framework of WCAG 2.0 can be found in the Overview of WCAG 2.0 document (more on that below).

2. Find your preferred way in

There is a lot more information published in WCAG 2.0 than WCAG 1.0 which, when looked at from start to finish, can seem fairly daunting. The fact that it is so big is a good thing as it means there is more supporting information than there was in WCAG 1.0; something that people felt was missing from the first set of guidelines. WCAG 1.0 has Guidelines, Checkpoints and Techniques whilst under WCAG 2.0 we have Principles, Guidelines, Success Criteria, Techniques and Common Failures (as explained above) as well as an outline of how each Guideline benefits a user. This will necessarily amount to a lot more information but the key thing to remember is that you don’t have to read WCAG 2.0 from start to finish in order to start working with it. How you approach it will depend very much on what you do and can be in any order depending on whether you are a policy maker, developer, designer, project manager or site owner. Here are a few of the key ways in:

• WCAG 2.0 Overview - this is a good place to start as it provides an introduction to all WCAG 2.0 documentation and will help you understand all the available resources and support documents that accompany the main WCAG 2.0 Guidelines document.
• Quick reference - this is probably the most useful document if you are a designer or developer who just wants to get started with WCAG 2.0. The document lists all Guidelines, Success Criteria and Techniques and and has the additional bonus of being customisable so you can list only those Guidelines and Success Criteria relevant to your site based on the technologies you use and your conformance level. This is a handy document if you want to hit the ground running and simply list what you have to do so you can go ahead and do it.
• WCAG 1.0 to 2.0 mapping - if you are currently using WCAG 1.0, and want to see what the corresponding provision might be in WCAG 2.0 this is the document you will want to use. It will also help you compare what is required under WCAG 1.0 Priorities and WCAG 2.0 Levels of conformance and help you identify what WCAG 1.0 Checkpoints are removed or updated and what Guidelines are new in WCAG 2.0.
• Understanding WCAG 2.0 - if you’re looking for further explanation of the Guidelines then this is the place to go. Under each Guideline you can find an explanation of the rationale behind each Success Criterion, who it benefits, an explanation of key words, and links to Techniques. This is an especially useful document if you are involved in testing websites as it will help you understand what constitutes a pass or fail.
• Conformance to WCAG - perhaps you have overall responsibility or input into your web accessibility policy within your organisation. You don’t need to understand the Guidelines or Techniques as such but you need to be able to define what your conformance level is that your organisation needs to meet, and therefore the guidelines that the designers and developers need to work to.

As you get more familiar with these documents you’ll very likely find one or two that provide you with your preferred way in. All of them also reference and link to other documents that you will need to dip into as you start working with the guidelines. So remember, think modular rather than linear.

3. Start now

While WAI are very clear that WCAG 1.0 remains the stable referencable version of the guidelines there is no harm in looking at WCAG 2.0 when either maintaining or building websites. WCAG 1.0 didn’t have as much explanation about how to meet Checkpoints as WCAG 2.0 does on meeting the Guidelines. As a result I’ve often dipped into WCAG 2.0 when asking myself what is the best way to fix such and such.

Looking again at the example of “blinking text” Guideline 2.2 “Provide users with disabilities enough time to read and use content”, has the Success Criteria 2.2.2 “Blinking: Content does not blink for more than three seconds, or a method is available to stop all blinking content in the Web page”. The related checkpoint under WCAG 1.0, checkpoint 7.2 simply says “Until user agents allow users to control blinking, avoid causing content to blink”; there was no further guidance given to help you establish whether or not you’d actually met the checkpoint unlike in WCAG 2.0.

For those familiar with accessible web design you’ll probably be encouraged to see that there are now techniques in WCAG 2.0 that you are already using, but were not explicit under WCAG 1.0. Even more encouraging is that the second version of the Guidelines is technology agnostic and is intended to be more robust and future proofed than WCAG 1.0. As such there are no more “Until user agent…” provisions which has generally prompted a collective sigh of relief!

4. Review your own site or web projects

To start working with WCAG 2.0 you will need a clear idea of what technologies you use in your site and what conformance level you’re aiming for. You can then customise the Quick Reference document to list all the Guidelines and Success Criteria relevant to your chosen technologies and conformance level. If you know where you are at you will be much clearer on where you have to go.

5. Take your time and plan it

We all work in the real world and nothing can change overnight so take your time and plan. If you already have a website that has been built to WCAG 1.0 you’ll may find there isn’t much work that needs to be done to make it WCAG 2.0 compliant. Once you are familiar with the framework and have decided on your approach I’d suggest the following steps when your transitioning from WCAG 1.0 to 2.0 process:

• Review the technologies used in your site
• Decide your WCAG 2.0 conformance level
• Review your site against WCAG 2.0

Once done you can then start managing the transition just as you would implementing changes in any web project. WAI plan to publish information about transitioning your site from WCAG 1.0 to 2.0 so watch this space.

There are many ways into WCAG 2.0 There are also many tools and resources to help you implement WCAG 2.0 with more planned such as “Application notes” which will look at the Guidelines from a topic point of view i.e. designing accessible forms. The trick is to start in a place that makes sense to you and take it from there and if in any doubt start with the WCAG 2.0 Overview and Quick Reference.