Accessibility Guidelines

Websites must be perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust. The guidelines provided by Section 508, WCAG, and WAI-ARIA must be met in order to be considered compliant by the Office of Civil Rights.

Who is WCAG, W3C, WAI-ARIA and all those acronyms?

  • W3C: This is the World Wide Web Consortium or W3C for short. They are the leading standard making body for the Web for HTML, XML, CSS, etc. (Yes, more acronyms). 
  • WCAG: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0  defines how to make web content more accessible to people with disabilities. It was developed within W3C. The primary goal of WCAG 2.0 is to provide standards that will meet the needs of everyone accessing web content. It is a technical standards used by Web developers and designers and others who need technical standards to make web accessibility possible.
  • WAI: Web Accessibility Initiative at W3C brings together people from industry, disability organizations, government, and research labs to develop guidelines and resources to help make the Web accessible to people with disabilities.
  • ARIA: Accessible Rich Internet Applications for accessible rich Internet applications. The primary focus of ARIA is to provide information about user interface controls to assistive technologies (e.g.: menus, navigation bars, roles, and states). WAI-ARIA can make applications more accessible by letting the user know where they are and how to get around using assistive technology and keyboard access.

WCAG’s Four Basic Principles 

There are guidelines and a success criteria for WCAG compliance and they are organized around four principles, which are:

  • Perceivable – which means the user must be able to perceive the information presented (it must be visible to some of their senses).
  • Operable – the user must be able to operate the interface.
  • Understandable – the user must be able to understand the operation of the user interface as well as to understand the information presented.
  • Robust – the user must be able to access the content, even with advances in technology, the content should remain accessible.

WCAG Guidelines

  1. Perceivable
    1.1 Provide text alternatives for any non-text content so that it can be changed into other forms people need, such as large print, braille, speech, symbols or simpler language.
    1.2 Provide alternatives for time-based media.
    1.3 Create content that can be presented in different ways (for example simpler layout) without losing information or structure.
    1.4 Make it easier for users to see and hear content including separating foreground from background.
  2. Operable
    2.1 Make all functionality available from a keyboard.
    2.2 Provide users enough time to read and use content.
    2.3 Do not design content in a way that is known to cause seizures.
    2.4 Provide ways to help users navigate, find content, and determine where they are.
  3. Understandable
    3.1 Make text content readable and understandable.
    3.2 Make Web pages appear and operate in predictable ways.
    3.3 Help users avoid and correct mistakes.
  4. Robust
    4.1 Maximize compatibility with current and future user agents, including assistive technologies.
The details of each guideline are avaialable on W3C’s How to Meet WCAG  (Quick Reference) website. It is not required to study each guideline in detail. This “quick” reference is what our accessibility director uses to guide and train our teams on accessibilty. 

Stop Here

Once you have completed accessibility training to this point, email our director of website accessibility so we can record your training and proceed with the rest of the training provided by your department manager.