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Re: WCAG certifications, are there any official requirements to certify a website?

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From: Lucy Greco
Date: Nov 10, 2011 2:12PM

Sorry I miss understood the question. I thought you wanted a web seal type of certification . I do think people should have some way of showing there ability to. if it's the people you want certified that is a good idea sorry for the miss understanding

Lucy Greco
Assistive Technology Specialist
Disabled Student's Program UC Berkeley
(510) 643-7591
http://attlc.berkeley.edu
http://webaccess.berkeley.edu


-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED> [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Bevi Chagnon
Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2011 6:35 PM
To: 'WebAIM Discussion List'
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] WCAG certifications, are there any official requirements to certify a website?

Lucy, I understand your frustration with certifications, but following your logic gives us these situations:

Medical diseases and their treatments are not static, yet certification as a doctor by a medical board is.
Laws are not static, yet certification as a lawyer by a legal bar association is.
Continue with this logic for many more professions, including Adobe's ACE certifications for its products.

What's needed is a certification process that allows people interested in the field to acquire the subject knowledge and be tested. This helps prospective employers (or clients) evaluate whether the person has at least been exposed to the concepts. No certification program can guarantee that the person will perform perfectly for an indefinite time. Medical, legal, and other professions require recertification after x period of years.

It's not a perfect system, but it does work for so many other professions.
Our problem is that we don't have a certification system in place that's similar to those used by accountants, lawyers, doctors, engineers, financial experts, etc. Those professions have a nonprofit organization that creates and oversees a curriculum used by educational institutions. Ideally, the nonprofit should adjust the required curriculum as technology changes, and provide guidelines on additional learning to keep current with changing requirements.

And certification renewal should be required every 2-3 years after attending additional courses to keep skills current.

The original poster was asking if there was such a certification program available. To the best of my knowledge, no, there isn't. Maybe it's time for a nonprofit to step up and put an international certification program in place. My hope is that it would focus on accessibility not just for websites, but also for Office documents and Acrobat PDFs as well.

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Bevi Chagnon | <EMAIL REMOVED>
PubCom - Trainers, consultants, designers, and developers Print, Web, Acrobat, XML, eBooks, and Federal Section 508
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-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Lucy Greco
Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2011 6:06 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] WCAG certifications, are there any official
requirements to certify a website?

As a screen reader user I don't thing surts are worth the bits they are
written with. Because as we all know web sites are not static and a surt
is. And what is a surt any way but a pat on the back of a person wanting a
surt.

Lucy Greco
Assistive Technology Specialist
Disabled Student's Program UC Berkeley
(510) 643-7591
http://attlc.berkeley.edu
http://webaccess.berkeley.edu