Making WCAG 2 Support Resources More Usable for You

Michael Cooper
Eric Eggert
Andrew Kirkpatrick
Sharron Rush

Introduction

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 has been a stable W3C Recommendation since December 2008
The language is designed to be compatible with legal regulation and corporate policy
Support materials provide interpretive guidance and implementation suggestions
These materials are updated twice per year

However...

Developers find the wealth of information overwhelming and confusing
The use of techniques as informative guidance is sometimes unclear

The WCAG Working Group is working on design, structure, and content solutions to these issues. Your input will help inform our work.

Panelists

Michael Cooper, W3C; staff contact to WCAG Working Group
Eric Eggert, W3C; WAI Outreach developer
Andrew Kirkpatrick, Adobe; co-chair of WCAG Working Group
Sharron Rush, Knowbility; co-chair of Education and Outreach Working Group

WCAG 2 and Support Resources

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0) is the stable standard
http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/
Understanding WCAG 2.0 provides informative explanatory guidance and links to techniques
http://www.w3.org/TR/UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20/
Techniques for WCAG 2.0 document potential ways to satisfy the success criteria, as well as ways to fail them
http://www.w3.org/WCAG20-TECHS/
How to Meet WCAG 2.0 (a.k.a. Quick Reference) summarizes the technique references for each success criterion
http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/

Exercise: How to Mark a Decorative Image?

A developer is working to satisfy WCAG 2.0 Success Criterion 1.1.1 (Non-text Content). Some images are decorative and need to be properly identified as such. Using the above resources, how to they determine the best way to do this for their situation?

Audience Input: Efficacy of Current Resources

How well do these resources help you to implement WCAG?
What works well about them?
What improvement suggestions do you have?
Consider design, structure, complexity, completeness, etc.

Survey on Resource Improvement

In late 2014 the WCAG Working Group conducted an informal survey on the WCAG 2.0 support materials. Some key findings:

Resources are too long!
Contain very useful information but easy to get lost
Viewers want more HTML 5 examples
Improved visual and organizational layout would help
Viewers regard the resources as too wordy - use plain language - too lengthy – overwhelming
Viewers are not of a single mind:
- “Too much information, need more techniques”
- “I like it - The heading styles, colors, font, font size, and overall organization of information/document structure are all good. Please don't change it, or at least don't change it too much. Interest in rating system or tagging for techniques”

New Work: Tutorials

The Education and Outreach (EO) and WCAG Working Groups have developed a series of tutorials to introduce developers to specific topics in a learning mode instead of a conformance mode.

Current tutorials cover:

Page Structure (Draft)
Menus (Draft)
Images
Tables
Forms
Carousels (Draft)

http://www.w3.org/WAI/tutorials/

New Work: Quick Reference Redesign

The EO and WCAG Working Groups are working on a redesign of the WCAG Quick Reference.
This will feature an easier to understand style and improved features for filtering and searching.
This work is at an early stage and we are looking for feature suggestions.

https://w3c.github.io/wai-wcag-quickref/

Audience Input: Ways to Improve Resources

How else might we improve the resources?
What features should we not remove during the improvement efforts?
What new resources would you like to see?

Thank You!

Slides: http://www.w3.org/2015/Talks/0306_WCAG/
Michael Cooper: cooper@w3.org
Eric Eggert: ee@w3.org
Andrew Kirkpatrick: akirkpat@adobe.com
Sharron Rush: srush@knowbility.com