To determine the accessibility of web content, the pages must be assessed. As with any assessment tool, web pages are evaluated against a set of standards. In the world of web accessibility, there are two well-known sets of accessibility standards:
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG):Authored by the W3C, WCAG version 1.0 are the "gold standard" for web accessibility. The WCAG provide 14 guidelines that are further broken down into 65 checkpoints. These checkpoints examine specific HTML techniques and concepts. The 14 WCAG guidelines are:
- Provide equivalent alternatives to auditory and visual content.
- Don't rely on color alone.
- Use markup and style sheets and do so properly.
- Clarify natural language usage.
- Create tables that transform gracefully.
- Ensure that pages featuring new technologies transform gracefully.
- Ensure user control of time-sensitive content changes.
- Ensure direct accessibility of embedded user interfaces.
- Design for device-independence.
- Use interim solutions.
- Use W3C technologies and guidelines.
- Provide context and orientation information.
- Provide clear navigation mechanisms.
- Ensure that documents are clear and simple.
Currently, the WAI is working on WCAG version 2.0. These guidelines are a radical departure from and simplification of the earlier version 1.0 guidelines. The version 2.0 guidelines may be released as early as the summer of 2004. A working draft of the guideline is located at;
http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-WCAG20-20040311/Section 508 Web Accessibility Standards:
Several years after the WCAG guidelines were published, the Access Board authored an abbreviated set of web accessibility guidelines based upon the original WCAG 1.0 guidelines. These 508 Accessibility Standards were created specifically to be enforced in federal agencies.
There is a side-by-side comparison of the WCAG and 508 accessibility standards located at:
http://www.jimthatcher.com/sidebyside.htmThe 508 standards take the most critical guidelines from the WCAG and operationalize them in a way that makes them verifiable. The federal Access Board did this in order to create a set of guidelines that could be enforced.
Who is responsible for assessing Web Accessibility?The institution is responsible for the accessibility of content presented on web pages. Depending on the model of web services, institutions may have a variety of responsible parties, but generally accessibility is the responsibility of the sponsor of the website. Some of the people/entities that may be responsible are:
- instructor/professor
- graduate assistants
- content developers
- departmental webmasters
- institutional web services
- institutional trainers
- administrative heads
The actual persons responsible for web accessibility should be clearly delineated in the institution's web accessibility policy.
