WAI Endorsement Checklist -- DRAFT --

This is a draft of a simple checklist of things that an external auditor could use to check that a claim of endorsement of the WAI content guidelines within an organization is serious.

In other words, it should help answer the question:

What does it mean for an organization to "endorse/implement the WAI content guidelines" ?

(note that this is specific to WCAG, since endorsing ATAG or UAAG - for tool developers - is somewhat different)

• check the "validity/seriousness" of the claim
  • what version of WCAG is referenced
  • what level of conformance (A, AA, AAA) is mentionned
  • what in addition to a WCAG conformance level is required (e.g. single A + HTML lang)
  • what is the "volume" scope within the organization content (all sites, one site, all pages, etc)
  • what is the "time" scope within the organization content (future, existing, updated, etc)

ex: "all W3C specification/technical reports conform to the WCAG 1.0 level AA"

• check what has changed at the process level within the organization
  • has any internal "best coding practices/publishing rules" document been modified and when did that happen ?
  • at what level has the support for this been given? is it an institutional policy, a web department policy, or what? If the current webmaster leaves, does the policy leave too?
  • is a direct pointer to WAI part of the new policy
  • are there any supporting documentation (written specifically for the organization specific audience)
  • are there penalty for breaking these conformance rules within the org
  • is there some new policy wrt outsourcing content production

ex: "The W3C publishing rules (http://www.w3.org/Guide/Reports) for Technical Reports require that all documents must conform to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, level Double-A (http://www.w3.org/tr/WCAG)"

• check the evaluation plan
  • is an accessibility audit of the existing data being put in place
  • are the measurements of the current web accessibility level saved for later reuse
  • is the measurement done internally or by an external/neutral body
  • are there procedures in place to handle accessibility complaints from site users?
  • are there plans and procedures in place for evaluating and updating pages? As in specific steps that will be taken, and when, to bring existing pages up to full compliance?

• check the authoring plan
  • what is the plan for sensibilizing/educating content providers
  • what supporting documentation and/or training sessions are available to web authors?
  • are new atag compliant authoring tools being tried/purchased ?
  • is there any contingency plan for existing data
  • who is performing quality assurance, for accessibility policy compliance, on new and updated pages? Does this happen before or after the site goes live?

Last modified: Wed Jul 19 15:47:32 MEST 2000