The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (WCAG 1.0)
Article Contents
- Page 1: Introduction to the Web Accessibility Initiative
- Current page: Page 2: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (WCAG 1.0)
- Page 3: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG 2.0)
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was formed in October 1994, and is currently made up of around 450 member organizations, including vendors of technology products and services, content providers, corporate users, research laboratories, standards bodies, and governments. See About the World Wide Web Consortium - external link.
The W3C has very specific goals and operating principles - external link as an organization. Number one on this list is Universal Access. They recognize the important role of the Internet in enabling new forms of human communication and opportunities to share knowledge. One of the W3C's primary goals is "to make these benefits available to all people, whatever their hardware, software, network infrastructure, native language, culture, geographical location, or physical or mental ability." A major step forward in this effort was the creation of the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) on April 7, 1997 in the County of Santa Clara, California, USA.
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (WCAG 1.0)
One of the first responsibilities of the WAI workgroup was to establish accessibility guidelines for use by web developers. A draft of these guidelines was introduced to the public on September 18, 1998. The WAI group worked extensively with stakeholders in revising these accessibility guidelines over time, with many draft versions of these guidelines being posted on the WAI web site. The final guidelines, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0, received W3C recommendation on May 5,1999, and can be read at the following site:
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 - external link.
Note
This is a long, technical document. If you are not accustomed to reading technical documents of this nature, you may want to read the Summary of WCAG 1.0.
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 1.0) of the WAI have had an important influence over web accessibility laws and policies created since 1999.
One of the first places where the guidelines were adopted by an organization was in the community college system of California, USA. The Chancellor's Office of California Community Colleges released a set of guidelines in August 1999 called Distance Education: Access Guidelines for Students with Disabilities, in which they reference WCAG 1.0. Their report can be read at the following site:
Distance Education: Access Guidelines for Students with Disabilities - external link, Chancellor's Office for California Community Colleges.
Later on, the US Access Board relied heavily on WCAG 1.0 when it adopted web accessibility standards for the United States federal government in Section 508 of the Reauthorized Rehabilitation Act. Almost all of the 16 web standards of Section 508 were drawn directly from WCAG 1.0, though the wording was only slightly changed to make these new regulations more enforceable. More recently, several other countries have adopted the WCAG 1.0 guidelines directly, rather than create derivative versions of the work.
Summary of WCAG 1.0
Guidelines
There are 14 basic guidelines in WCAG 1.0:
- Guideline 1. Provide equivalent alternatives to auditory and visual content.
- Guideline 2. Don't rely on color alone.
- Guideline 3. Use markup and style sheets and do so properly.
- Guideline 4. Clarify natural language usage.
- Guideline 5. Create tables that transform gracefully.
- Guideline 6. Ensure that pages featuring new technologies transform gracefully.
- Guideline 7. Ensure user control of time-sensitive content changes.
- Guideline 8. Ensure direct accessibility of embedded user interfaces.
- Guideline 9. Design for device-independence.
- Guideline 10. Use interim solutions.
- Guideline 11. Use W3C technologies and guidelines.
- Guideline 12. Provide context and orientation information.
- Guideline 13. Provide clear navigation mechanisms.
- Guideline 14. Ensure that documents are clear and simple.
Each of these guidelines also can be further expanded into a list of checkpoints. For example, there are 5 checkpoints under guideline 1. We won't go into the details of each of the checkpoints of each of the guidelines here, but you may want to look at the guidelines - external link, arranged in a checklist format, at (scroll down to the tables to see the checklists).
Priorities or levels
Other than the guidelines themselves, another important aspect of WCAG 1.0 is the assignment of "priorities" or "levels" to each of the checkpoints. The WAI describes the priorities or levels like this:
- [Priority 1]
- A web content developer must satisfy this checkpoint. Otherwise, one or more groups will find it impossible to access information in the document. Satisfying this checkpoint is a basic requirement for some groups to be able to use web documents.
- [Priority 2]
- A web content developer should satisfy this checkpoint. Otherwise, one or more groups will find it difficult to access information in the document. Satisfying this checkpoint will remove significant barriers to accessing web documents.
- [Priority 3]
- A web content developer may address this checkpoint. Otherwise, one or more groups will find it somewhat difficult to access information in the document. Satisfying this checkpoint will improve access to web documents.
A web page that meets all of the checkpoints of all of the guidelines is "Priority 3 conformant." If only the Priority 1 checkpoints are met, the web page complies only with priority 1, and so on.
For some reason, there are actually three different ways of denoting conformance to the WCAG 1.0 guidelines. A web page that conforms to all of the Priority 1 checkpoints could be called "Priority 1 conformant," "Level 1 conformant," or "Single-A conformant." The WAI has even created icons for each of the conformance levels. See the list below:
- Priority 1 = Level 1 = Single-A
- Priority 2 = Level 2 = Double-A
- Priority 3 = Level 3 = Triple-A
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