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.
