Conformance to WAI Accessibility Guidelines

Status of this document

This document is a draft of a unified WAI conformance statement for review by the W3C Membership and other interested parties.

1. Introduction

This document explains how to claim conformance to these guidelines published by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C):

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (WCAG): These guidelines explain how to make Web content accessible to people with disabilities.
Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (ATAG): This specification provides guidelines for Web authoring tool developers. Its purpose is two-fold: to assist developers in designing authoring tools that generate accessible Web content and to assist developers in creating an accessible authoring interface.
User Agent Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (UAAG): This document provides guidelines to user agent developers for making their products accessible to people with disabilities. User agents include graphical desktop browsers, multimedia players, plug-ins, voice browsers, and other assistive technologies used to access Web content. Developers must ensure that user agent functionalities are accessible to users with disabilities and that user agents communicate with other user agents to provide additional functionalities necessary for full access to the Web.

2. Location of a claim

A claim and the details of the claim may be published anywhere (e.g., on the Web or in product documentation). If the claim details are published separately from the claim, the claim must include a reference to the details. The claim and claim details must be accessible according to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

Each claim must refer to an explanation of the claim, which resides at the W3C site. The reference may appear along with the details of the claim.

For example, an author may put a conformance icon on a Web page and could link that to a separate page for the claim details. On the details page, the author must refer to the W3C explanation of the claim. Or, the icon itself may link directly to the W3C explanation, and the claim details might appear on the same page as the icon.

3. Details of a claim

Each claim must include all of the following information:

The title and version of the guidelines that is the object of the claim.
The URI of the guidelines.
The conformance level satisfied.
The date of the claim.
The checkpoints of the chosen conformance level considered not applicable. W3C encourages claimants to use checklist provided with each guidelines document for this purpose.
The scope of the claim.

Each guidelines document provides an example claim appropriate for that document.

Claim details may be provided in text or metadata markup (e.g., using RDF and an RDF schema designed for WAI conformance claims). If the details are provided in a markup language, they must be accessible according to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

A sample RDF schema in development is available at the W3C Website.

4. Validation of a claim

Anyone may make a conformance claim (e.g., vendors about their own products, third parties about those products, content providers about their own Web sites, journalists about Web sites of others, etc.). Claimants are solely responsible for their claims and the use of the conformance icons. The appearance of a WAI conformance icon does not imply that W3C has reviewed the claim or agrees with it.

No agency, including W3C, has the definitive authority to validate claims. All claims are subject to review, and upon demonstration that a claim is flawed or incomplete, claimants are expected to modify it accordingly or retract it.

Please note that claims are not conditional on an automated test. Today, there is no tool that can perform a completely automatic assessment on the checkpoints in the guidelines, and fully automatic testing may remain difficult or impossible.

5. Conformance Icons

"Conformance Icons" may be used by claimants on Web sites, product packaging, documentation, etc. to indicate conformance.

5.1 How to use the icons

For any of the guidelines documents:

Choose the icon for the conformance level you wish to claim.
On the Web, use the indicated markup to link to the W3C explanation of the icon.

5.2 The Web Content Accessibility icons

The following sections explain how to claim conformance to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 in HTML 4.

WCAG Level A Conformance

Put the following markup in your page for the level A icon:

<A href="http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG1A-Conformance"
      title="Explanation of Level A Conformance">
  <IMG height="32" width="88" 
          src="http://www.w3.org/WAI/wcag1A"
          alt="Level A conformance icon, 
          W3C-WAI Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines 1.0"></A>

WCAG Level Double-A Conformance

Put the following markup in your page for the level Double A icon:

<A href="http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG1AA-Conformance"
      title="Explanation of Level Double-A Conformance">
  <IMG height="32" width="88" 
          src="http://www.w3.org/WAI/wcag1AA"
          alt="Level Double-A conformance icon, 
          W3C-WAI Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines 1.0"></A>

WCAG Level Triple-A Conformance

Put the following markup in your page for the level Triple A icon:

<A href="http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG1AAA-Conformance"
      title="Explanation of Level Triple-A Conformance">
  <IMG height="32" width="88" 
          src="http://www.w3.org/WAI/wcag1AAA"
          alt="Level Triple-A conformance icon, 
          W3C-WAI Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines 1.0"></A>

Ensure that the technology of the Web supports accessibility
Develop accessibility guidelines
Develop tools to facilitate evaluation and repair of Web sites
Conduct education and outreach
Coordinate with research and development

WAI's International Program Office enables partnering of industry, disability organizations, accessibility research organizations, and governments interested in creating an accessible Web.

Ian Jacobs, wai@w3.org
Last modified: $Date: 2000/01/18 15:49:28 $