06.01.06
Are Web Accessibility Standards Doomed? WCAG 2.0 Eviscerated
Required Reading. In another new article from A List Apart, Joe Clark writes a thorough but blistering and dismaying review of the W3C’s long-awaited new iteration of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, aptly entitled To Hell With WCAG 2. (The article includes links to all the primary documents.)
To quote some summarizing comments (with bold emphases added):
In an effort to be all things to all web content, the fundamentals of WCAG 2 are nearly impossible for a working standards-compliant developer to understand. WCAG 2 backtracks on basics of responsible web development that are well accepted by standardistas. WCAG 2 is not enough of an improvement and was not worth the wait.
…A lot of loose ends have been tidied up, and many low-priority guidelines are now pretty solid. The problem here is that standardistas already knew what to do to cover the same territory as those low-priority guidelines. Where WCAG 2 breaks down is in the big stuff. Curiously, though, and perhaps due to meticulous editing over the years, the big stuff is well camouflaged and, to an uninformed reader, WCAG 2 seems reasonable. It isn’t, and you as a working standards-compliant developer are going to find it next to impossible to implement WCAG 2.
…WCAG 2 will be unusable by real-world developers, especially standards-compliant developers. It is too vague and counterfactual to be a reliable basis for government regulation. It leaves too many loopholes for developers on the hunt for them. WCAG 2 is a failure, and not even a noble one at that.
While reading the article, I nearly wept. Over the last few months, in part because of a client highly sensitized to accessibility issues (which is good), I have spent a great deal of effort educating myself about accessibility issues and best practices. The touchstone for suches has been WCAG 1.0 — now seven years old. This standards document serves as a mutual enforcement device: my client can use it to remind me of what I need to do, and I can use it to remind my client of what is reasonable (and possible) to expect.
And that means WCAG 2.0 will be the new touchstone. Unfortunately, it’s difficult-at-best to understand, impossible to comply with, and — incredibly — does not even include the most rudimentary demands of valid HTML and (hello!) plain language.
And that means that WCAG 2.0 will not achieve its primary function: improving web accessibility by providing clear, practical (i.e. real-world), and achievable standards for creating web sites and content.
This is a huge issue that is not merely semantic because in many countries — such as Britain and, oh, the entire European Union — a site that is not accessible faces potentially devastating lawsuits or other legal action. This is not a hypothetical — just ask Target.com, subject of a huge legal judgement on precisely this point. And, again, a key standards touchstone are the standards put forth by the W3C — an international body that defines stuff like, oh, the HTTP protocol itself.
Stay tuned, and keep aware of emerging developments. This is a very big deal.
Duncan Biscuits said,
June 10, 2006 at 7:57 am
It’s crazy isn’t it? Huge documents that hardly anybody will ever read, and that will merely serve to bring the whole idea of Web Standards into disrepute. It looks to the average web user as if the Net is totally upside down: the w3c can sit up there in their ivory tower and summarily kill off the dear old marquee tag and blinking text. But nobody seems able to kill off all the spam that is choking the Net. When you look at the sort of things people have to put up with in the ‘real’ world of Internet use, it just makes the w3c and its petty attitudes look kind of pointless, doesn’t it?
Spencer said,
June 11, 2006 at 1:18 pm
Hi Duncan, and welcome.
Methinks the problem here is not the whole idea of standards. Without them, the Internet (let alone the Web) simply wouldn’t work. Standards are by nature dry and technical. It’s kinda like law: only lawyers (and law geeks) will bother to read the original documents, but through them plain-language summaries percolate out to us mere mortals — everyone knows that burglary is illegal and a landlord can’t throw you out on your ass for no reason. I may never read the XHTML standard itself, but there are plenty of approachable guides and references by those who have, and thus I know how to write XHTML that complies with the standard.
My view on this particular case — WCAG 2.0 — is that it’s a problem with the dynamic in (and maybe the composition of) the particular working group tasked with creating this standard. The very fact that the current WCAG 2.0 draft evidently eschews existing and applicable standards — compliant XHTML just being one — is ample evidence of a fundamental breakdown in that working group’s process, not to mention logical faculties. For that matter, this has the odor of heavy politics inside the working group, as well.
Be all that as it may, the proverbial proof in the pudding will be what happens now. It’s one thing for a large and decentralized organization to have one cluster go kinda haywire. It would be unrealistic to expect that to never ever happen. The question, then, is whether the larger W3C body — and the Web community at large — will step up to the plate and serve its intended role as a mitigating and rationalizing influence.
Clearly I have major problems with WCAG 2.0, and I’m not trying to make excuses for it. But I don’t see that as evidence that the entire W3C is a ship of fools. Now, if the W3C lets such an obviously flawed draft standard become enacted, then that’s definitely a much bigger problems and my optimism will take a gut kick. At that point it’s not just a black sheep uncle being an idiot, but a sign that the entire family has serious issues.
Re: your spam aside: In all fairness, the W3C — the World Wide Web Consortium — is a Web standards body. Spam is email, and that’s an Internet issue, the Web being merely one component of the Internet. Internet standards, including protocols and such, are established and managed by the Internet Society (ISOC) and its various working groups. The W3C has zero jurisdiction over email. At the same time, you’re absolutely right: such distinctions are completely lost on “civilians.”
And fwiw, seems to me that the marquee and blink tags weren’t summarily executed by an effete cabal — it was more like a mass lynching by an angry mob of thousands.
Personally, I can see the argument in favor of the marquee tag, but I don’t miss blink one bit. At the same time you’re right that sometimes it all gets kinda silly — I remember the screaming flame wars ca. 1993 over whether the center tag would ruin the Web.