The New Accessibility Guidelines: WCAG 2.0. What’s happening in the Graveyard Shift? Not covering everything in WCAG 2.0 Focusing on –some of the good

The New Accessibility Guidelines: WCAG 2.0


What’s happening in the Graveyard Shift?

• Not covering everything in WCAG 2.0• Focusing on

– some of the good points– … and some of the bad!

• Looking at– Implications on design– How it can/might be adopted

• Will describe imagery on screen• General discussion/bitching


Who’s who – Andy Clarke

• The modfather, wasp-like designer of note (and no taking the Mickey)


Who’s who – Patrick Lauke

• Salford’s finest accessibility-aware webmaster working for a University

• Receives coded messages about accessibility from a strange growth on the back of his head


Who’s who – Gez Lemon

• “When life deals you a lemon, make a lemon meringue pie”

• Web developer for Paciello Group and prolific maker of accessibility tools & widgets


Who’s who – Ian Lloyd

• The Accessify guy• Working for

Nationwide since time began

• Itinerant traveller and VW nut

• Face made entirely of rubber


WaSP ATF

• Either by chance or design, we are all ATF members

– WaSP = Web Standards Project– ATF = Accessibility Task Force


Not that ATF


WCAG – A brief history

• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines = WCAG (or wuh-cag!)

• Version 1.0 released in 1999– Ancient in Internet years– Much of it out-of-date/irrelevant

• Other accessibility ‘standards’ (e.g. section 508)– WCAG too wide-reaching for some

implementations– Note: PAS 78 *not* a variant of WCAG/508


WCAG 2.0 – Philosophy behind the change

• Technology-agnostic– not just guidelines for browsers– Non browser-specific terminology = generic

terminology• P.O.U.R. Web site/page should be:

– Perceivable (cater for sense deficiencies)– Operable (how you control items)– Understandable (language, jargon etc)– Robust (compatibility with current/future tech)


WCAG 1.0 and WCAG 2.0 compared

• WCAG 1.0– 2.1 – “Ensure that all information conveyed

with color is also available without color, for example from context or markup”

• WCAG 2.0– 1.3.2 – “Any information that is conveyed by

color is also visually evident without color”

Looks simple enough? Not always



• WCAG 1.0– 13.1 – “Clearly identify the target of each link”

• WCAG 2.0– 2.4.4 – “Each link is programmatically

associated with text from which its purpose can be determined”

• Trans: “write meaningful link phrases” – ‘take a look at our product range’ rather than – ‘click here to view our products’”



• WCAG 1.0– 3.6 – “Mark up lists and list items properly”

• WCAG 2.0– 1.3.1 – “Information and relationships

conveyed through presentation can be programmatically determined and notification of changes to these is available to user agents, including assistive technologies”



• Translation: “Oh crap, I’ve given up the will to live. Pass me a beer, I’m gonna watch telly instead”


New in WCAG 2.0

• Baselines– Define a set of technologies that conformance

claim is based on• Scoping

– Define areas on a site that are outside of accessibility conformance claim

• Success criteria– Not exactly ‘new’ but a reinvention of priority

levels• More documentation …


New documentation in WCAG 2.0

• Hand-over to Patrick to explain some of the other documents, how they relate to each other, purposes of each other

• Not bitching about them at this point … all in due course!


WCAG 2.0 - normative

Core WCAG 2.0 defines:– The 4 principles (P.O.U.R.)– New terminology used (Rosetta stone?)– Conformance (levels, baseline, scoping)– Principles > Guidelines > Success Criteria– Appendices (including comparison between

WCAG 1 checkpoints and WCAG 2 SC)

The only normative document.


WCAG 2.0 – informative

Supporting documents:– Understanding WCAG 2.0– Techniques for WCAG 2.0– About Baselines for WCAG 2.0– Cooking with WCAG 2.0 – Application notes

Liable to change (hence not normative).


Understanding WCAG 2.0

For each guideline:– Intent of the guideline (what's the problem, why do we

need to address it?)

– Advisory techniques (nice to have, but no SC covers them)

– How to meet the Success Criteria:• Key terms (newspeak cheat sheet?)

• Intent of SC

• Techniques for addressing SC (links to “Techniques...” document)

• Benefits (so if we address this, why is it better?)

• Examples


Techniques for WCAG 2.0

Big unwieldy document at this point:– Common failures (just to start on positive note...)

– Client-side scripting techniques

– CSS techniques

– General techniques (however you want to implement)

– HTML techniques

– Server-side techniques

– SMIL techniques (who here has done SMIL?)

– Plain text techniques

Confusingly, WAI has link to old “General Techniques...” in navigation...


About Baselines for WCAG 2.0

– What are baselines (with annotated examples)

– Who sets the baseline

– How can developers choose a baseline

– Examples of conformance claims

– And the ever popular: “Vertical and Horizontal Scoping in Conformance Statements”


Cooking with WCAG 2.0


Application notes

“In the future [...] Application Notes would provide detailed guidance for a specific topic [...]. For example, an Application Note on forms would include WCAG 2.0 success criteria, techniques, and strategies for developing accessible forms.”

Will be produced by Education and Outreach Working Group (EOWG)


Other WAI guidelines

• Of course other parts of the accessibility equation need to be in place:– Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines

(ATAG) – also currently 2.0 WD and based on WCAG 2.0

– User Agent Accessibility Guidelines (UAAG)


The Improvements in WCAG 2.0

• Gez to pick out some of the improvements in WCAG 2.0, possible with some examples?


What’s bad about WCAG 2.0

• Beginning with Patrick• Then Andy• Then Ian


Language of WCAG 2.0

• Requirements of WCAG 2.0“WCAG 2.0 deliverables must address the

needs of a variety of readers, including people who wish to:

– Create accessible, innovative Web sites.

– Create policies related to Web accessibility.

– Assess whether a Web site conforms to the guidelines.

– Develop authoring tools, user agents, or evaluation and repair tools.

– Teach principles of accessible Web content.”


Language of WCAG 2.0 (cont.)

• WCAG 2.0 itself“These informative documents are written to be

used by a diverse audience, including but not limited to:

– people who create Web content

– developers who write code

– quality assurance or accessibility evaluators

– policy makers

– managers

– users”


Language of WCAG 2.0 (cont.)

– Why are the guidelines and documents currently so difficult to understand?

– To remain tech-agnostic, invented a whole new language (full of sound and clatter, signifying nothing)

– Even seasoned experts can't understand it

– Programmatically determined? Authored unit? Authored content? Even...mechanism?


“Mechanism” in WCAG 2.0

– “process or technique for achieving a result”

– SC 2.4.1 A mechanism is available to bypass blocks of content that are repeated on multiple Web units.

– On first reading: do I need to now add skip links to everything?

– No, even just marking a navigation up as a list counts as a “mechanism”!?


Implementing WCAG 2.0

– Study WCAG 2.0, support documents, consult your friends on WAI WG – and some things may become clearer

– University setup – central web team and devolved web authors

– How can I expect web authors (not just professionals, but part-time lecturers, technicians, enthusiasts) to implement WCAG 2.0?

– “Here, read this...and this...see you in a few months once you master the secret art of the Wu-Kag-Clan”


Implementing WCAG 2.0 (cont.)

– How I implemented WCAG 1.0 – never claim compliance

– Own interpretation (removed most “Until user agents...”)

– And for WCAG 2.0?

– Shawn Lawton Henry: “Go test with users - forget the specs”

– Writing own interpretation of WCAG 2.0, making it tech-specific to our baseline and adding own interpretation/preferred method (“mechanism”?)


WCAG 2.0 and the designer

• Andy to cover off impact of some specific points on design – how will it adversely affect design, how might it improve design (standardising techniques that some designers have resisted til now?)


• Back to ian …


Mighty Joe Clarke (the 800lb Gorilla)

• To Hell with WCAG 2.0– Has alerted many to issues with WCAG 2.0 (a

good thing)– Seems to have been catalyst for ‘last call’

extension• WCAG Samurai

– Closed group– A good or bad thing?– Could it derail WCAG 2.0?

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/tohellwithwcag2


Summing up …

• WCAG 2.0 not yet a done deal– But only if you have your say

• http://tinyurl.com/hmtus (WCAG 2.0 comment form)

• Email to [email protected]

• You are allowed to criticise!– Non-participation in WCAG working group

does not preclude you from having your say

http://tinyurl.com/hmtus


So then …

Any questions?

Documents

The New Accessibility Guidelines: WCAG 2.0. What’s happening in the Graveyard Shift? Not covering everything in WCAG 2.0 Focusing on –some of the good