Happy Birthday WCAG 2.0

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 is celebrating its first birthday.

Although adoption of the web accessibility standards has been pretty slow going, awareness in WCAG 2.0 is increasing and the guidelines are starting to make their way into web policy making.

One of the first governments to embrace W3C accessibility was New Zealand. In March 2009 they adopted WCAG 2.0 as a government accessibility standard (Level AA).

With governments in India, the UK, Canada and Australia following this trend in migrating from WCAG 1.0, we should see an increase in web design accessibility.

To celebrate WCAG 2.0’s first anniversary, accessibleweb will be conducting a review of each component of the web accessibility guidelines within the Perceivable, Operable, Understandable and Robust sections.

Last Call Working Draft – Mark II

The WCAG process gathers pace this week with a new call for review. The Last Call Working Draft represents the 2nd stage in the W3C document process.

Call for Review: WCAG 2.0 Last Call Working Draft
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ig/2007OctDec/0060.html

This is the second time the document process has reached the Last Call Working Draft stage. The new deadline for comments is February 2008 and will deal with the following points:

• Are the guidelines and Success Criteria clear?
• Are the Success Criteria implementable and testable?
• Does meeting the Success Criteria improve accessibility?

The successful completion of this step will result in the document process reaching the Candidate Recommendation stage.

How are the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 developing?

An insight to the development of WCAG 2.0 is provided by Judy Brewer (Director of the Web Accessibility Initiative) during a recent interview.

For developers, some positive observations include the reduction of constraints faced whilst creating accessible content. The provision of support materials will also be welcomed.

For people with disabilities, access to a broader range of web technologies is promised.

Interview extracts are available from the webstandards.org website.