WCAG 2.0 takes a giant leap forward — Now it's your turn
WCAG 2.0 is going, boldly, where it's never gone before: Today WCAG 2.0 is at "W3C Candidate Recommendation"! Can you feel the Web accessibility world shake? Candidate Recommendation means that we think the technical content is stable and we want developers and designers to start using WCAG 2.0, to test it out in every-day situations. For more about Candidate Recommendation, see How WAI Develops Accessibility Guidelines through the W3C Process.
I hear you asking, "When will it be completed?" We're optimistic that it will indeed be completed in 2008. If implementation goes well and there are no significant new issues, the "Proposed Recommendation" of WCAG 2.0 should be published in the third quarter of 2008, with the final Web standard W3C Recommendation published about two months after that.
What's important now is that we need your help moving WCAG 2.0 to the next stage. In order to advance WCAG 2.0, we need to demonstrate that it can be implemented in different types of Web content, in a variety of human languages, and using a variety of technologies. We're looking for several websites that conform at each level (A, AA, AAA), and at least two independent implementations of every success criterion. (Success criteria and levels are introduced in Overview of WCAG 2.0 Documents.) We welcome WCAG 2.0 implementation experience from a wide range of environments, including e-commerce, government, education, blogs, etc.
Note that there are a few success criteria that are at risk of becoming advisory if we don't get at least two implementations of them. Here is a special appeal for implementations of those at risk success criteria.
To be a part of this stage of WCAG 2.0 implementation experience, check out WCAG 2.0 Candidate Recommendation Implementation Information.
There are a lot of reasons to start implementing WCAG 2.0 now, in addition to the possibility of your website being publicly listed as an implementation; see "What are the benefits of using WCAG 2.0?" in the WCAG 2 FAQ.
Thanks for all the support moving WCAG 2.0 towards completion!
If we implement, can we claim compliance with the CR? We could reasonably do a new site and we'll also look at applying 'repairs' to an existing site.
Many thanks
Liam
Liam,
Yes, you can claim compliance with the CR. Make sure that you clearly indicate that it's a CR publication and point to the dated URI, not the short one:
Thanks for your offer to implement! It would be great to get your feedback both for a new site, and for retrofitting an existing site.
We are clarifying the CR implementation information, and encourage all to check back later next week for more details. Feel free to send questions to team-wcag2-implementations@w3.org (which is an internal list, not publicly archived).
The main problem of WCAG 2.0 is its size. Understanding and Techniques documents are so big, that my IE7 works slow on them. FireFox performs better, but even it died once without any notice during my WCAG 2.0 documents browsing. By its size WCAG 2.0 is very close to War and Peace of Leo Tolstoy. This titanic book is a part of the official high school curriculum in Russia. However only a few scholars really read it. They prefer abridged versions, which take around 5% of the original folio.
Talking seriously, WCAG 2.0 is too broad to convey easy to understand ideas about web accessibility. In attempt to combat complexity and size, many web developers suggested a compact version of WCAG 2.0, which is easier to understand and to follow.