Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
In 1999 the Web Accessibility Initiative, a project by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), published the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines WCAG 1.0. In recent years, these have been widely accepted as the definitive guidelines on how to create accessible websites.
Since 2003, the WAI has been working on the second edition of these guidelines, the WCAG 2.0, which aim to be up to date and more technology neutral. This is currently at the Working Draft stage.
Criticism of WAI guidelines
In articles such as WCAC 2.0: The new W3C guidelines evaluated, To Hell with WCAG 2.0 and Testability Costs Too Much, the WAI has been criticised for allowing WCAG 1.0 to get increasingly out of step with today’s technologies and techniques for creating and consuming web content, for the slow pace of development of WCAG 2.0, for making the new guidelines difficult to navigate and understand, and other argued failings. In one attempt to provide guidelines that are designed to be up to date, easier to understand, and more relevant and practical to typical web development projects, Joe Clark’s WCAG Samurai project has published an unofficial set of errata to WCAG 1.0.
Other guidelines
Philippines
As part of the Web Accessibility Initiatives in the Philippines, the government through the National Council for the Welfare of Disabled Persons (NCWDP) board approved the recommendation of forming an adhoc or core group of webmasters that will help in the implementation of the Biwako Millennium Framework set by the UNESCAP.
The Philippines was also the place where the Interregional Seminar and Regional Demonstration Workshop on Accessible Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) to Persons with Disabilities was held where eleven countries from Asia – Pacific were represented. The Manila Accessible Information and Communications Technologies Design Recommendations was drafted and adopted in 2003.
United Kingdom
In the UK, the Disability Rights Commission (DRC) in collaboration with BSI have published Pas 78 which outlines good practice in commissioning accessible websites.
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.
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