WCAG Current and Future Work

Topics for this presentation

1. Accessibility Guidlines Working Group (AG WG)
2. Task Forces
3. WCAG 2.x background and status
4. WCAG 2.1
5. WCAG 2.2
6. WCAG 3.0 background and status

Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (AG WG)

• The mission of the AG WG is to develop specifications to support making implementations of web technologies accessible for people with disabilities, and to develop and maintain implementation support materials
• AG WG produced the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) versions 1.0, 2.0, 2.1
• Work is underway on WCAG versions 2.2 and 3.0

Task forces for guidelines content

• Cognitive and Learning Disabilities Accessibility Task Force
  ➡️ Making Content Usable for People with Cognitive and Learning Disabilities
• Mobile Accessibility Task Force
  ➡️ Mobile Accessibility: How WCAG 2.0 and Other W3C/WAI Guidelines Apply to Mobile
• Low Vision Accessibility Task Force
  ➡️ Accessibility Requirements for People with Low Vision

Other task forces

• Accessibility Conformance Testing (ACT) Task Force
  ➡️ Produces rules for WCAG 2.2 and WCAG 3.0
• Silver Task Force
  ➡️ Developing WCAG 3.0

WCAG 2.0

• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 finalized in 2008
• Intended to be technology-neutral, future-proofed, testable
• Applicable to all web sites
• Multi-stakeholder development and strict conformance model made it suitable for adoption in many government and organization policies

WCAG 2.1

• Decision taken in 2016 to create 2.1 version to add new Success Criteria (SC)
• Other efforts worldwide raised priority of a rapid update
• WCAG 2.1 completed June 2018
• Added 17 new SC, from over 70 initially proposed
• Completing Understanding and Techniques took another year

WCAG 2.2

• Work began on WCAG 2.2 shortly after the release of WCAG 2.1
• WCAG 2.2 includes SC that were considered important for WCAG 2.1 but could not be included

WCAG 2.2 Status

• Fewer SC (SC) have been added
• AG WG has adopted Agile principles
  • The quality of deliverables improves by way of developing understanding documents and techniques earlier in the process
• As of August 2020, the Working Group has completed consideration of potential new SC and has published the candidate SC for wide review

WCAG 3.0 Goals

• Update guidelines to better address user needs and accommodate new technologies
• Incorporate tool guidance with authoring guidance to avoid the accessibility support challenge of WCAG 2
• Define clearer testing procedures and allow for multiple approaches
• Meet the needs of policies while being updated more frequently than WCAG 2

WCAG 3.0 Goals

• Define ways to claim conformance for different units than web page(s)
• Reduce reading complexity where possible
• Base guidance on research where feasible and emphasize importance of future research

WCAG 3.0 Conformance

• WCAG 3.0 will approach conformance differently from WCAG 2
• Goals are to support:
  • Various and emerging technologies
  • Multiple ways of evaluation
  • Simple and complex, large and small sites
• Currently conformance is expected to apply to views and processes (which can still apply to full web pages)
• Scoring and conformance model that better reflects the experience for people with disabilities