The Web Accessibility Initiative Standard
Guidelines
The Web Accessibility Initiative Standard is a set of guidelines devised by W3C (the World Wide Web Consortium) to help developers and lawmakers in their task of ensuring web site accessibility.
Most accessibility legislation throughout the world directly follows this official standard, specifying the documents and the version number. Others have written their own versions or combined these with general usability or best practices guidelines. You will find an excellent, up-to-date source for legislation and guidelines in different countries at www.w3.org.
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 became an official W3C recommendation in May 1999. The recommendation explains accessible use of Web technologies for page authors and site developers. It has three priority levels and three ‘conformance levels’ (for meeting the standards of accessibility), 14 guidelines and over 60 checkpoints. You will find them all at www.w3.org.
Conforming with the standards of accessibility
The W3C is the main group for setting standards on the Internet, and it is the most respected group, too. Their published guidelines allow you to achieve basic levels of accessibility for your web site.
Level A
This is the basic level which any web site should be able to achieve. If your site meets level A guidelines, then it should work reasonably well in a text-only browser. This means that most disabled people should be able to use your site.
Any images, videos and sounds should have a text alternative for browsers that are not enabled for these media.
Your web site must comply with this level. Otherwise, you will be discriminating against some users.
Level AA
The main recommendation for this level is to use HTML code (the language of the Internet) correctly. Use style sheets to control layout and presentation of pages. Style sheets (referred to as CSS or cascading style sheets) control font size, positioning, background and borders. A text-based browser will ignore the style sheet and, if the page has been written correctly, the page will still be readable.
Level AAA
The final level recommends many details that will make the page easier for disabled people. A speech reader might not be able to work out the difference between two links next to each other, so you should include some text between the links (see the navigation bar at the bottom of this page).
The Web Accessibility Initiative recommends that you use bars for clear navigation, together with markers to show visitors where they are on the site. Other details include creating a logical order for links and forms to allow a visitor using the tab key to tab down the page, and inserting place-holding characters to help people fill in forms.
When online materials achieve one of the accessibility levels, you can use the appropriate logo on each page that conforms to that particular standard:
Level 1 approval
Level 2 Approval
Level 3 approval
The logos on your web pages will let everyone know you conform to the standards. At the same time, they raise awareness about web accessibility. W3C are not responsible for verifying if web sites meet the standards. It is your own responsibility to confirm the accessibility of your site and to display the right logo.
Validation
There are a number of free validation tools that can help you check if your web site meets the accessibility standards. Some tools work online, while others can be downloaded. They allow you to test your web pages for compliance, and report where your pages may not be complying. Here are some of the free online tools available:
Usually with the online tools above, you need to enter the URL of the page you want to test. The reports generated are usually long, to cover all the guidelines. They class any errors as Priority 1, 2 or 3.
Free downloadable tools include A-Prompt. This is a software tool which helps web authors create pages which are more directly accessible and which work well with assistive technology, so that people with disabilities can use and enjoy the Internet. Assistive technology is any device that helps with functions that might otherwise be difficult or impossible (for example, a keyboard with larger keys or a special mouse). A-Prompt evaluates web pages for accessibility barriers, and provides web authors with a fast and easy way to make the necessary repairs.
In addition to using the automatic tools, you should also check for yourself to make sure that your web site language and navigation are clear.
