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Re: Wcag 2.1

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From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: May 11, 2017 7:58AM

My understanding of WCAG 2.1 is that the new requirements )low vision,
cognitive, mobile) success criteria will be optional (I think you can
choose to comply with 1 or more of those), though I am not overly
clear on the details.

What I do know is that Section 508 was updated to references WCAG 2.0
on January 18, 2017 (9 years after the WCAG 2.0 release, back then we
did not even have an accessible touch screen device), and that the ADA
does not reference WCAG 2.0 specifically, which has caused headaches,
chaos and endless amount of corporate accessibility policy debate all
over the nation. In Europe we started campaigning for the EU
Accessibility Directive in 2011 and it came through in late 2016
referncing WCAG 2.0 with compliance coming into effective starting
2018.
So, seriously, even if 2.1 becomes an official standard in 2018 or
2019, there will be another 3 to 5 years (spoken as an unrealistic
optimist) before that standard is likely to be referenced by an
official legislation, more likely 6 to 8 years.
WE are all aware that we need more agile standards and legislation to
address technological progress, and it is one of the big talking
points of WCAG 3.0 (or WCAG AG, nicknamed silver).
Making corporate accessibility policies reference WCAG 2.0 is huge,
and the priority for now, I would say. Asking them to do more and
prefer for a new standard may be too much for the legal team.
You can review the 2.1 success cirteria with the designers, developers
and content folks and dress them up as usability improvements and
possible extras.



On 5/11/17, Tim Harshbarger < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> My understanding is that when WCAG 2.1 becomes a technical recommendation,
> there isn't any requirement for laws to update to that version. That will be
> up to whatever political entities have the legislative power to change the
> laws.
>
> Also, by the time WCAG 2.1 is close to becoming an official recommendation,
> it will not be undergoing any more changes. However, I expect for most
> political entities, they will want to wait until the specification is
> completed before they look into altering their laws to incorporate it. While
> WCAG 2.1 has a timeline, that is just the plan--and few plans survive
> contact with reality.
>
> I am sure we have people on this list more fully involved with W3C and the
> process of creating WCAG 2.1 that can give better and more accurate
> information--but that is my understanding of things--well, my last comment
> about when laws might be updated is more an opinion about how legislative
> bodies are likely to react.
>
> Thanks,
> Tim
>
>