Managing the transition to WCAG2.0

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) date from the last century. Back in 1999, the web was a different place. Ajax was a detergent and most thought broadband was gangster slang for the Spice Girls. Eight years on, WCAG has grown old disgracefully, and much of it is obsolete.

While browsers, plug-ins, website design techniques, and assistive technology have all moved on, the guidelines have stood still. Checkpoint 10.5 advises designers to include non-link printable characters between links until user agents can render adjacent links distinctly. Now they can, that’s a waste of time and likely to annoy screen reader users who will have to listen to those characters being read out. Similarly, the reminder to include placeholder characters in edit boxes and text areas is no longer necessary because today’s assistive technology can handle empty controls correctly.

These are examples of priority 3 checkpoints. If organisations were to achieve the highest level of accessibility as defined by WCAG 1.0, they would likely do more damage than good and waste a lot of time making fiddly adjustments that have no impact on the end user. Conversely, some of the priority 3 checkpoints (such as ensuring links follow a logical tab order) have a massive impact on users and deserve more prominence.

It’s been a long time coming, but WCAG 2.0, a radical overhaul of the guidelines, is expected to be finalised some time in 2008, perhaps as early as the first quarter. Designers will first have to get their heads around a change in terminology. WCAG 2.0 is built around the principles of making websites perceivable, operable, understandable and robust. Guidelines are organised within these categories, but the checkpoints of old have been enhanced with success criteria.

Using the success criteria, it’s much easier for web designers to understand how to satisfy the guidelines. As an example, under WCAG 1.0, designers were reminded to ensure that foreground and background colour combinations provide sufficient contrast when viewed by someone who has colour deficits or a black and white screen. Under WCAG 2.0, guideline 1.4 simplifies the language (“make it easy to distinguish foreground information from its background”), and explains how to do that. For AA standard accessibility, there should be a contrast ratio of at least 5:1 and for AAA, the ratio should be 7:1 or higher. There are links to tools to measure the contrast ratio too.

Web designers are invited to discuss their suggested techniques and workarounds. This social networking aspect should ensure that even after the guidelines are finalised, their implementation can move with the times.

Site owners should prepare for the transition to WCAG 2.0. Any new sites should be evaluated using it, and accessibility policies should be updated in preparation. The transition to WCAG 2.0 should enable websites to focus more on changes that will help end users, and to win more business by further improving the user experience. The guidelines are even longer than WCAG 1.0 but the Quick Reference can be customised and provides a great introduction.

While there’s going to be a great deal of work for most people in understanding the new guidelines, the whole process can be speeded up by testing with actual users as early as possible. Despite the advances in WCAG 2.0, the difference between technical accessibility and making a side usable by a wide range of people with disabilities will remain huge.