Accessibility (Part III) – Exploring Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) and Guidelines

This is a three part series on Web Accessibility, Parts I and II may be accessed below:

• Part I - Identifying Disabilities
• Part II - The Importance of Web Standards

Issues pertaining to Web accessibility have become a mainstream topic not only for people with disabilities, but also for government entities and the IT industry as a whole. In this series, Part I and II discussed in general what accessibility is and why it is important to have a set of guidelines to follow. As you have learned so far, accessibility is not a straight forward issue, it has many facets to its complexity. In this part of the Series we will be covering aspects of the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was created to identify accessibility issues, find solutions, and promote interoperability on the Web. The W3C’s main focus domains are Architecture, Interaction, Technology and Society, and Web Accessibility. The W3C being an international consortium currently has outreach offices in eleven countries and operates from the following three host sites:

1)  North America – MIT at www.lcs.mit.edu
2)  Europe – ERCIM at www.ercim.org
3)  Asia – Keio University at www.keio.ac.jp

Since Web accessibility is complex and carries different levels of concern, the WAI currently works to support five primary activities:

1)  ensuring that web technologies support accessibility;
2)  developing guidelines for accessibility;
3)  developing tools to evaluate and facilitate accessibility;
4)  conducting education and outreach;
5)  and coordinating with research and development.

Along with these topics of activities are guidelines which were developed and play a critical role in international Web accessibility standards which are sponsored by a variety of government and industry supporters. These guidelines describe how to create, design software for the production of, design accessible browsers and tools, and design XML applications for accessible websites.

The WAI encompasses the following guidelines for different components to address accessibility concerns. These guidelines were developed in conjunction with W3C technical specifications (HTML, XML, CSS, SVG, SMIL, etc.), and derived from the fundamental technical specifications of the Web.

• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) include general content guidelines to be used by developers, accessibility evaluation and authoring tools.
• User Agent Accessibility Guidelines (UAAG) addresses assisted technologies, Web browsers, and other devices such as media players.
• Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG) illustrate how to develop authoring tools (software) to create accessible Web pages and content.

The relationship between these guidelines is defined in the Essential Components of Web Accessibility.

The primary goal of both WCAG 1.0 and 2.0 is to promote accessibility. WCAG version 2.0 is currently in the working draft phase, and applies additional advanced Web technologies for more accurate testing and ease of use. Requirements for WCAG 2.0 and the WCAG 2.0 Quick Reference guide are helpful in the transition to 2.0. Transitioning a site from WCAG 1.0 to WCAG 2.0 will not require an abundance of changes if the existing site conforms to 1.0 rule.

A major difference between WCAG 1.0 and 2.0 is:

• 1.0 bases conformance by use guidelines that have priority checkpoints.
• 2.0 bases conformance by use of four design principals of Web accessibility, with each principle having guidelines, and each guideline having success criteria.

The original vision of 1.0 was for HTML documents, which made it very difficult to apply to Extensible Markup Language (XML) applications. However, with 2.0, XML and other technologies such as Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL), Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), and Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) should now work in conjunction with each other. Due to the vast majority of tools, and different types of agencies that use WCAG 1.0, WCAG 2.0 is designed to be backward and forward compatible to keep up with current and future technologies.