Summary
This week, a Last Call Working Draft of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG 2.0) was published, along with two Working Draft support documents; understanding WCAG 2.0, and Techniques for WCAG 2.0. There is also a document that explains the baseline concept that will be useful for understanding WCAG 2.0.
Author: Gez Lemon
Unlike WCAG 1.0, WCAG 2.0 intends to be technology-independent, and should be applicable to all technologies rather than just W3C technologies. To help achieve this goal, the guidelines are arranged around four principles.
- Content must be perceivable
- Interface components in the content must be operable
- Content and controls must be understandable
- Content should be robust enough to work with current and future user agents (including assistive technologies)
Under each principle are guidelines that define what's required for authors to conform to the principle. Each guideline has its own set of success criteria, which are testable statements to define and clarify what's required from the author for conformance. Appendix B contains a checklist of success criteria organised by guideline, which is useful for a quick overview of the guidelines.
Only the WCAG 2.0 document is in Last Call, and comments should be made on or before 31 May 2006. Comments can be made online, or through downloadable forms. The Instructions for Commenting on WCAG 2.0 document explains the commenting procedure, along with the downloadable forms in a variety of formats.
Category: Accessibility.