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Re: Legacy content recommendation

for

From: Jared Smith
Date: Aug 26, 2014 12:11PM

You're asking the right questions. We run into this situation often in
WebAIM's evaluation and certification work.

If you (or a 3rd party) were to make a WCAG 2.0 conformance claim, you
could only claim conformance on the content that is actually
conformant, not the archival content. There's no requirement to label
or identify the other content itself as being inaccessible or
non-conformant. Your suggestion that users could request accessible
versions of this content is a great approach for content that is not
feasible or logical to make accessible, and in a way identifies it as
being archival and not optimized for accessibility.

Much of accessibility is about fighting the right battles and getting
the best bang for your buck. From what you have described, it makes
much more sense to put your efforts into ensuring accessibility of the
new site and new content moving forward than to put significant time
and money toward remediating archival content. There may, however, be
some site-wide or minor changes you can make to remove significant
accessibility barriers for that content.

Jared


On Tue, Aug 26, 2014 at 11:57 AM, Jordan Wilson
< <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> Our agency has a web client we¹re currently working with who is starting a
> large-scale (10k+ page) website redesign and they¹ve chosen to build to
> WCAG 2.0 A and AA.
>
> This particular client has a significant amount of legacy content from an
> existing non-compliant site. That content is not current, but outdated
> such as 2009 financial summaries or archived monthly staff newsletters.
> The content is in the form of flash, PDFs, videos, non-accessible HTML etc
> and goes back 7+ years.
>
> Any content which would be current or vital they are rebuilding as part of
> the new accessible site.
>
> While they have committed to making their new site and current content
> accessible, making that old content accessible represents a considerable
> financial burden for limited utility and they¹re unable to commit to doing
> so financially at this point.
>
> For the sake of brevity, let¹s assume that they can¹t make that legacy
> content accessible. Are there any recommended techniques or acceptable
> practices for indicating or labeling that content as not-accessible?
>
> The same client is also interested in having their new site certified by a
> third party as compliant to demonstrate their commitment to accessibility.
> They¹re undergoing a significant redesign and content creation effort to
> make their web presence accessible.
>
> My worry is whether leaving this legacy content on the site would make
> accessibility certification a non-starter. Has anyone had any similar
> experiences? Are there any recommendations to handle it properly? Is
> leaving legacy content inaccessible ever acceptable?
>
> One idea we discussed was to provide a form or contact option which would
> allow users to request an accessible version of a specific inaccessible
> asset as necessary.
>
> Thanks for your help/insight,
>
> Jordan Wilson
>
>
> > >