Origin

Unlike other situations other CS-SIS members may commonly encounter, web accessibility awareness does not usually begin with a memo from a University Disability Resource Center.  Moreover, whether a given set of legal standards are applicable to any given institution are unclear and standards are inconsistently enforced. For more information about the law, refer to Assistive Technology -- Understanding the Law and the section on web accessibility.

The rest of this page will be devoted to voluntary efforts to make web pages accessible.

Identifying the Right Standard

Most readers (to the extent that they have heard of web accessibility at all), have heard of the Section 508 standards.  The Section 508 standards with respect to web pages are essentially a checklist of eleven items meant to address common concerns at the time the regulation was drafted.  They were expressly based on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 developed by W3C.  Those standards are outdated.  While a web page that meets section 508 standards would be more accessible  than one that does not, the gold standard for accessibility is WCAG 2.0.

Summarizing WCAG 2.0

WCAG 2.0 is organized by Principles, Guidelines, and Success Criteria.  The principles are general objectives and each of the four principles can be summarized in a single word: perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust.  Each of the 12 guidelines is a plain English one sentence statement of what needs to be achieved.  The 12 Success Criteria relevant to "A" level conformance and the 26 additional Success Criteria relevant to "AA" level conformance provide highly technical testable criteria by which to measure conformance.

Not all of the criteria are likely to apply to every page.  Some of the criteria can be conformed to with much conscious thought or effort because most webmasters/developers/content creators do certain things anyway.  Many can be conformed to with a relatively modest amount of effort.  A few require considerable time and effort.

The Structure of These Web Accessibility Pages

 The Committee will not attempt a detailed explanation of how to conform to each of the 38 Success Criteria applicable to either "A" or "AA"level conformance.  Instead, the Committee will briefly summarize each criterion in non-technical language, rate the difficulty level of achieving conformance, assess the impact of non-conformance for that criterion, discuss how to validate for that criterion (including links to web-based validators, if applicable) and provide links to detailed third-party information regarding how to conform to the criterion.

Principle 1 Short Title: Perceivable

WCAG 2.0 Principle 1

GUIDELINE 1.1 SHORT TITLE: TEXT ALTERNATIVES

WCAG 2.0 Guideline 1.1

Success Criteria 1.1.1 Short Title: Non-text Content

Summary:  Non-text content must have a textual equivalent, subject to certain exceptions.  The most relevant exception to our readers: mere decoration needs no textual equivalent.

Conformance Level:  A

Degree of Difficulty:  Low, but can be time consuming if done after the fact.

Validation: Can be validated with AChecker.

Other W3C links: How to Meet 1.1.1, Understanding 1.1.1

GUIDELINE 1.2 SHORT TITLE: TIME-BASED MEDIA

WCAG 2.0 Guideline 1.2

Success Criteria 1.2.1 Short Title: Audio-only and Video-only (Prerecorded)

Summary:  Audio-only tracks need a transcript unless the track itself is an alternative for text.  Video-only tracks either need audio description or textual description unless the track itself is an alternative for text.

Conformance Level:  A

Degree of Difficulty:  Modest, but time consuming.  Use of speech recognition software (e.g., Windows Speech Recognition) can reduce the time necessary to create a transcript if used simultaneously with audio-recording. 

Validation:  Must be validated manually.

Other W3C links:  How to Meet 1.2.2, Understanding 1.2.2.

Success Criteria 1.2.1 Short Title: Captions (Prerecorded)

Summary:  Audio-only tracks need a transcript unless the track itself is an alternative for text.  Video-only tracks either need audio description or textual description unless the track itself is an alternative for text.

Conformance Level:  A

Degree of Difficulty:  Modest, but time consuming. 

[to be continued]