Feature: Tangling with Accessible Web Content

The W3C has been working for some time on devising Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (better known as WCAG 2.0). This set of guidelines is intended to supercede WCAG 1.0 which was thought to be too closely linked to particular technology, and so reflective of what was available in 1999. WCAG 2.0 is being written as technologically agnostic. Further, it is to be more than simply a list of html 'dos and don’ts'; coached in non-tech-specific terminology. This is to meet its goals as perceivable, operable, understandable, robust and future-proofed.

WCAG 2.0 also aims to provide baselines for accessibility at different conformance levels, to provide a framework for conformance claims, and offer more extensive and complete documentation than WCAG 1.0.

It's all proving a tall order.

The WCAG 2.0 Last Call Working Draft and supporting documents were published on 27 April 2006 (now closed for comment) and caused a furore amongst developers who live by standards. Its period of consultation was extended from 3 weeks to 6 after a damning article by Joe Clarke, To Hell with WCAG 2 was published in A List Apart.

His wasn’t the only article in this vein, and standards-conscious developers were worried by the volume of information they were being asked to take in and review in what appeared to be a short period of time - though there are another two steps before the document becomes a Recommendation: 'Candidate Recommendation' and 'Proposed Recommendation'; both inviting consultation. See:
http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/wcag20.php.

Of the several hundred concerned parties who did read the documentation and respond to the Last Call, there were worries that an attempt to future-proof the guidelines by way of technological agnosticism had resulted in vagueness that rendered the documents unusable (see the tenor of responses at:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-comments-wcag20/)

In the comments to the "A List Apart" article, developer and standards advocate Gez Lemon at Juicy Studio pointed out that where WCAG 1.0 failed to fully support those with cognitive limitations, WCAG 2.0 was even worse, dropping 11 of the points that would have helped, and in late June a number of people posted a Formal Objection to WCAG 2.0 in the W3C mailing lists for this failing.

WAI Outreach Coordinator Shawn Henry, in response to developers concerns at SXSW2006, half-joked: 'don’t read WCAG 2.0, don’t even read "Understanding WCAG 2.0", but do talk to your users and test, test, test,' highlighting that developing standards is not enough to ensure accessibility, rather it is the first and essential step in making your site accessible.

The W3C has attempted to further answer developers’ concerns by providing the WCAG 2.0 Quick Reference, allowing developers to see more easily which checkpoints are needed for which technologies and at which level of conformance, allowing them to set appropriate baseline technology.

Meanwhile, the W3C has published an Editor’s Draft of the Dynamic Accessible Web Content Roadmap. This is another area for standardising as assistive technologies respond differently - if at all - to web pages updated with AJAX or other scripting technologies. In the wake of the many AJAX-based web applications, this roadmap is discussing standards to make such dynamic content accessible.

While the W3C has attempted to address developers’ concerns through due process (though it would be foolhardy to guess what their response to the many comments will be), this leaves us with a number of questions:
• Is the WCAG 2.0’s future proofing already undermined by the Dynamic Accessible Web Content Roadmap?
• How many more unforeseen technologies will appear that also neatly sidestep the WCAG 2.0?
• And does this crisis suggest that rather than re-writing the WCAG from scratch, a set of extensions to WCAG 1.0 or a WCAG 1.1 would have been a more valuable step forward for Web accessibility?

Karl Sabino
Flow Interactive

Associated Link: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0

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