Obtuse, obscure, and obsolete – all terms that could have been applied to the old accessibility guidelines from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the body that develop the global standards for web development.
Having taken seven years to produce the final document, the release of WCAG 2.0 should be the opportunity we’ve all been waiting for – a chance to clarify, re-assess, and modernise the guidelines.
What's good about WCAG 2.0?
Although it is still early days and everyone is still evaluating the guidelines, I think that WCAG 2.0 is a significant step towards a useful standard and a universal approach to accessibility.
Clear and Simple
The biggest improvement in the new report is the clarity and simplicity of the structure – I think that it makes the concept of "accessibility" far more transparent and accessible (pardon the pun) for everyone.
The report is organised into four levels, and seems to be perfectly structured for use in a busy web design agency:
- Principles – There are four top-level, non-technical principles that embody the new approach to accessibility (POUR – Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust). This overview is a useful tool for customers and non-technical staff, providing a clear understanding about the goals of accessibility without the technical detail;
- Guidelines – Each Principle has a series of Guidelines that provide more detail about what that Principle applies to. These Guidelines are useful for more technical staff, such as Project Managers;
- Success Criteria – Each Guideline has a number of criteria by which a Guideline can be said to have been passed. The technical nature of the criteria mean that they are more useful for developers; and
- Techniques – Techniques provide practical advice for the passing the Success Criteria.
Realistic
It's common practice to include an accessibility requirement in website tenders – "The solution should conform to Level AAA accessibility" appears more and more often these days. Yes, Level AAA accessibility is achievable, but only with intensive development and extensive testing, neither of which happens overnight – and neither of which are cheap.
The three levels of accessibility still exist (ranging from "A", the lowest, to "AAA" the highest) in WCAG 2.0, but the tone of the document plays down their importance. To be honest, they weren't helpful to the accessibility movement - they created a "checkbox culture" amongst web developers, who thought that online automated testing was enough to claim accessibility, and amongst website owners, where "accessibility" was just an after-thought in a tender, albeit a legally required one. There was no real knowledge, regard, or concern.
The new guidelines are far more realistic in terms of application than their predecessor: they realise that some content is difficult to make accessible to everyone; as such, they move away from making themselves applicable to whole websites towards a page-by-page approach; and they clearly state that the highest level of accessibility is difficult (and sometimes impossible) to achieve.
"It is not recommended that level AAA conformance be required as a general policy for entire sites because it is not possible to satisfy all Level AAA Success Criteria for some content."
It seems that knowing your audience, selecting the right Success Criteria, and applying the guidelines and real-world advice is a far better approach:
"Note that even content that conforms at the highest level (AAA) will not be accessible to individuals with all types, degrees, or combinations of disability, particularly in the cognitive language and learning areas. Authors are encouraged to seek relevant advice about current best practice to ensure that Web content is accessible, as far as possible, to this community."
Content is King
The last big improvement is that the guidelines focus upon what really matters – the content.
The old guidelines dated very quickly – they referred to specific technology which, in the ever-changing world of the Internet, was out-of-date in no time at all.
The new Success Criteria use more general terms, and talk about specific types of content: synchronised media (movies with audio content, for example); audio; animation; images; and text. As galling as it is for me to admit, visitors don't come to a website to admire the code or structure - they visit to use the content. It is the content that needs to be accessible.
This is an important point, one that has always been true but which few have realised - accessibility isn't the responsibility of the web developer alone. Website owners have to become involved, have to invest effort and resources to produce useful and usable content, now and into the future. Without this buy-in and without an ongoing commitment to accessibility, requesting (and paying for!) an accessible website is a pointless exercise.
The Verdict
The guidelines are new, brand new, so only time will tell – but I like what I see.
WCAG 2.0 is everything their predecessor wasn't - transparent, realistic, and, best of all, based around the content on your site (and, as a result, around your visitors).
What is also clear is that an accessible website requires several components – an experienced accessibility expert, a knowledgeable web designer, and a committed customer.
Useful References