What is WCAG?
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) is a number of directives to enhance the accessability on the internte for users with functional variations. The guidelines are foremost focused around information such as text, images, sound, code and tags that defines structural objects and presentation of different kinds of content. It can for example offer different text alternatives for visual elements to make it easier for the visitor to listen to the websites content instead of reading it.
Who is WCAG for?
The guidelines are primarily produced for the following target groups:
- Produceras of web content (authors, web designers etc.)
- Developers of web platforms / systems
- Developers of platforms for accessability
- Others that wants or needs a standard for accessability, including mobile devices
Related resources aims to meet the demands of the big crowd of people, including policy createros, leaders, researchers and others.
What does WCAG contain?
WCAG contains 78 criterias divided in 13 different guidelines that are organized under 4 principals: Possible to perceive, handling, understandable and robustness. For each guideline there are 3 testable levels: A, AA and AAA. These are usually used when demands are set for a new website.
Is WCAG translated to multiple languages?
Yes, a complete list of translations can be found here.
Who develops WCAG?
The Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (AG WG) produces the guidelines for WCAG, which is a part of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).
Is WCAG available for WordPress?
The short answer is yes. Basically all web platforms can be used to create websites based on the WCAG guidelines. WordPress in particular is very appropriate for this purpose and with some modification even the admin interface can be adapted to meet high levels of accessability.
Can i WCAG-adapt an existing website?
Most often, yes. As long as it is built on best practice principles there is usually no huge obstacles in adapting a site to the WCAG guidelines.
What if the difference between WCAG 2.0, 2.1 and 2.2?
2.2 is the newest standard in use. These are legacy compatible, which means that if the website meets the standards for 2.1 or 2.2, you don't have to bother about 2.0 that was released in December 2008. To read about the differences between these standards, you can visit this page.
Why should you bother about accessability?
The goal with the guidelines is to make sure that information is available to as many people as possible on the same terms.