New Accessibility Guidelines A "Welcomed Update"

The World Wide Web Consortium recently approved new accessibility guidelines. Passed in December 2008, the new "Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0" is now the official recommendation for web accessibility for the disabled. This new WCAG 2.0 document, a welcomed update, replaces the WCAG 1.0 W3C recommendation of 1999. This article is part one in a series discussing the impact of WCAG 2.0 on your website.

Dolson, Joseph C. Practical eCommerce (2009). Articles>Web Design>Accessibility>Standards

New Accessibility Guidelines Part II: Operability

The concept behind website operability is simple: Can everybody use the tools and mechanisms required to operate your website? Operability may seem easy, but it can be very challenging. Every control, every link, and every button on your site is a potential point of failure for operability. Without appropriate consideration for the disabled, you run the risk that disabled users will be unable to access your site.

Dolson, Joseph C. Practical eCommerce (2009). Articles>Web Design>Accessibility>Usability

New Accessibility Guidelines Part III: Understandability

The understandability of text is crucial to web accessibility. At broad levels, this means specifying text languages, explaining the meanings of jargon or idioms, and expanding abbreviations to clarify text. It's not just text that can present a barrier to accessibility, however. A lack of organizational predictability or proper error management can greatly decrease the accessibility of any website.

Dolson, Joseph C. Practical eCommerce (2009). Articles>Web Design>Accessibility>Writing

New Accessibility Guidelines Part IV: Robustness

The fourth principle of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines requires new web documents to be “robust.” Robustness, future-proofing, user-agent independence, accessibility-supported: All are terms that suggest the same basic idea that your documents should follow standard, supported models for web document types. In many ways, this is the simplest and most testable requirement of the WCAG, but the details can be quite complicated.

Dolson, Joseph C. Practical eCommerce (2009). Articles>Web Design>Accessibility>Standards