Website accessibility is an ongoing, evolving process intended to make communication and information-sharing via the web a frictionless experience for all people—regardless of their abilities.
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), an international community that develops open standards to ensure the long-term growth of the Web, leads these efforts through the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), which creates standards and supporting materials for the development community. The current standard is 2.1, which builds on the 2.0 guidelines; however, 3.0 is already being developed and a public working draft has been released.
Per W3C, the draft addresses…“many of the needs of users with blindness, low vision and other vision impairments; deafness and hearing loss; limited movement and dexterity; speech disabilities; sensory disorders; cognitive and learning disabilities...accessibility of web content on desktops, laptops, tablets, mobile devices, wearable devices...various types of web content including static content, interactive content, visual and auditory media, and virtual and augmented reality…[as well as] related web tools such as user agents (browsers and assistive technologies), content management systems, authoring tools, and testing tools.”
With the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990, progress has steadily been made. Recent standards (2.1) include guidelines on formatting, e.g., line height, and letter-word spacing, as well as hover and focus states, character key shortcuts, pointer gestures, and status messages, intended to improve accessibility guidance for three major groups: users with cognitive or learning disabilities, users with low vision, and users with disabilities on mobile devices.
Among the guidelines in development, the following appear to be included:
—Text alternatives - a direct migration from WCAG 2.X success criterion
—Clear words - new guidance that could not previously be included in WCAG 2.X. It is directly based on Making content usable for people with cognitive and learning disabilities [coga-usable].
—Captions - an example of adapting WCAG 2.X guidance to emerging technologies, such as web virtual reality
—Structured content - migration and merging of several previously unrelated WCAG 2.X success criteria
—Visual contrast of text - a migration of WCAG 2.X with substantial changes
While the 3.0 standard remains a work in-progress, it’s critical that organizations factor accessibility into their plans. Here are four things to keep in mind:
1. There’s nothing like the first time—Your organization’s website may enjoy a lot of visitors. However, you will only have a single opportunity to engage each one for the first time. Consider all audiences when planning the experience you want your site to deliver, and remember that their backgrounds and levels of ability may differ.
2. Determine how best to comply—It may not be mandatory for your website to strictly comply with WCAG; but, it’s important to know how compliant you want to be. More importantly, figure that out before you launch or update your website.
3. Stay flexible—The more flexible your website, and your development partner can be, the better. As your website experience evolves, be able to tighten or loosen your restrictions over time.
4. Keep informed—W3C has moved at a relatively fast pace from 1.0 to 2.0; rest assured, 3.0 will be here soon and will then be surpassed by 4.0. Work with an expert partner, and educate yourself, so that your website isn’t lagging.
Having implemented—and enhanced—more than a dozen large-scale websites across the spectrum of accessibility compliance, our team can assist you if your firm is exploring the best approach to ADA and WCAG compliance. Please contact us to schedule a conversation.
If you’d like to read more on this topic, please visit some of our previous articles:
—ADA, WCAG, and Website Compliance: High Stakes or Table Stakes?
—Web Accessibility: The Benefits & Consequences of Compliance
—Four Steps to Improve the Accessibility of Your Website
—Web Accessibility: Giving access to everyone
Here are some additional resources:
—WCAG 3.0 W3C First Public Working Draft 21 January 2021
—WCAG 2.1 at a Glance
—WCAG 2.0 (Checklist)
—W3C Guidelines
