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Re: WCAG 2.0 level A

for

From: Simius Puer
Date: Dec 13, 2009 3:39AM

Hi Geof

I think your original phrasing of question has created some confusion. As I
understand it you are not anti-accessibility (as your question seemed to
suggest) at all, but simply that you don't think single-A conformance is
sufficient.

To be honest I'd have to agree with you. I've worked with many Government
departments in the UK and Australia, both of whom have much more stringent
accessibility requirements than many other countries and AA conformance was
seen as the sensible minimum standard.

I say minimum standard, as many people seem to forget that you can aim
higher...there is nothing stopping you.

The reason I think AA is the best balance is that it is a) very easily
achievable and b) covers a broad range of disabilities. As soon as you try
to hit full AAA compliance the difficulty rating hikes considerably and the
number of additional people it caters for diminishes so whether you are
looking at it in business terms (of return on investment) or Government
terms (of sound public spending) there are significantly diminishing reasons
for doing so. Again, I'm not saying there are no reasons so please do not
take my comments as anti-AAA conformance - I just live in the real world.

Most of the clients I have worked for I have actually convinced to go a step
further than AA, but without actually aiming for full AAA compliance. There
are many requirements of the AAA level which are actually easy to meet
whilst adding very little to development costs, and sometimes nothing to the
running costs of a website.

Sadly here in Ireland many Government bodies barely pay lip-service to the
matter of accessibility and even An Garda Síochána (the national police
force) recently relaunched their website which fails miserably to address
the issue. Thankfully the National Disability Authority is working to turn
that around.

With regards to the new legislation in Ontario I would not be anti-single-A
conformance at all. It is usually necessary to do these things in stages (a
bit like transitional/strict DTD for HTML...it's 'transitional' for a reason
people!) whereby a simple standard is adopted with an aim towards working
towards a higher standard over time. For example the UK Government set out
a plan (not yet fully successful) for all Government site to be single A
accessible first, with a deadline for AA conformance a while later. They
even threatened to pull budgets for any new/revisted website that does not
conform to AA though this proved a little bit of a toothless threat.

If your "powers that be" issue a consultation request, please post a link up
here as I'm sure that quite a few people here would be happy to contribute.
You might also want to post it on the Web Accessibility Group (
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=41800) on LinkedIn if you are a member.

Cheers