The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) announced today that the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG 2.0) have become a full W3C Standard.
This is great news and something many in the accessibility world have been waiting for for a long time. Version one of the guidelines were released in 1999, which is a long time in anyone’s book, but in “web years” it’s a very long time!
Much has changed on the web since 1999 and WCAG 2.0 seeks to address many of the new accessibility challenges facing the web today. As a document, it’s much more flexible and testable than WCAG 1.0 and covers more than just W3C Technologies. Proprietary technologies such as PDFs and Flash etc are also covered.
The techniques document for WCAG 2.0 is also updateable which should help the guidelines move with technology, and not become out of date as quickly as WCAG 1.0 did.
As always, guidelines cannot guarantee accessibility unless they are understood and applied correctly, but they can go a long way towards helping developers and content editors get things right. Having a modern, stable version of the guidelines for today’s web is only a good thing.
Further Reading
- Full W3C Press Release
- WCAG 2.0 at a Glance
- The WCAG 2.0 Documents
- WCAG 2.0 Guidelines
- How to Meet WCAG 2.0: Customisable Quick Reference
- Understanding WCAG 2.0
- Techniques for WCAG 2.0
- How to Update Your Web Site from WCAG 1.0 to WCAG 2.0
- WCAG 2.0 Resources - The Web Standards Project
- WCAG 2.0 is official - but is that all you need to make a site accessible?
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