Last week the Worldwide Web Consortium formally approved WCAG 2.2 as the most up-to-date international standard for web accessibility.
Version one of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines dates back to 1999 with updates arriving every few years from the W3C, a public interest not-for-profit led by Sir Tim Berners-Lee and CEO Jeffrey Jaffe, to reflect the changing nature of today’s web.
In addition to providing a technical framework for both public and private sector organizations wishing to ensure that their digital products, including both websites and mobile apps, remain accessible to the estimated 15-20% of people living with some type of disability – WCAG guidelines also play an important role when it comes to legal compliance with legislation such as the Americans with Disabilities Act. As recently as August of this year the U.S. Department of Justice published proposed rules increasing digital accessibility mandates on state and local public entities whilst in the European Union and the U.K. both the EU Web Accessibility Directive and Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Requirements respectively point to WCAG standards.
Help for cognitive and motor disabilities
All in all, WCAG 2.2 adds nine key updates differentiating it from its predecessor WCAG 2.1 published in 2018. The greatest gains can be seen in 2 important areas – cognitive and learning disabilities as well as helping those living with motor and dexterity issues. For example, in 2.2 there is a renewed emphasis on providing “consistent help” to users. This means maintaining help and support functions in the same place on websites rather than periodically shifting these options about which can lead to frustration and confusion.
Another boon for users who may be neurodiverse or have a learning difficulty is the new recommendation around authentication processes. This stipulates that users should be able to enjoy alternative options to established methods such as memorizing passwords and solving puzzles. Meanwhile, recommendations around specific websites pre-filling information fields on forms stand to benefit both those with cognitive and motor impairments. This success criterion is referred to as “redundant entry” and is concerned with users being tasked with entering the same information such as name and address details multiple times.
For users with motor impairments in particular, there are dedicated guidelines to assist with keyboard navigation such as not obscuring the keyboard focus with a banner and having alternative methods for element interactions which some dexterity-impaired users may find difficult such a s dragging items in a menu. Another recommendation that will help users with dexterity issues as well as individuals with low vision relates to the appropriate size and spacing of on-screen buttons with a focus on not making them too small and cramped together.
A consistent theme to emerge from many of the guidelines is their potential to help all users, not just those with disabilities, through making the website or app simpler and more intuitive to use. For e-commerce sites, there is also potential for a clear positive impact on the bottom line as measures such as eliminating redundant entries are likely to speed up checkout processes.
Urgent implementation?
Undoubtedly WCAG 2.2 represents an ambitious new gold standard for web accessibility in 2023 but should organizations already be allocating budget towards achieving its timely implementation?
Of course, there is no satisfactory one-size-fits-all answer but, as of right now, there are 2 important contextual considerations to keep in mind.
The first is that WCAG 2.2 is more of a complimentary update to WCAG 2.1 building on many of its predecessor’s success criteria. It is not a paradigm-shifting overhaul of requirements such as those being envisioned for the future-focused WCAG 3.0. Equally, though organizations should view web accessibility through a broader lens than compliance alone – it is unlikely, in the short term at least, that the various international legal mandates will point specifically to WCAG 2.2 due to its arrival on the scene being so recent.
Last week, Hassell Inclusion a U.K.-based digital accessibility consultancy hosted a webinar on the impact of WCAG 2.2. Hassell Inclusion’s CEO Jonathan Hassell, who played a pivotal role in the formulation of both the International and British Standards for embedding digital accessibility relayed the following advice for decision-makers considering whether or not to implement WCAG 2.2.
“So, if you have genuine ambitions towards getting good at accessibility and you’ve got plans in place is WCAG 2.2 really worth changing all those plans for?” Hassell asked.
“What I would say, is that if you are still working towards meeting the WCAG 2.1 AA criteria – just keep going with those plans for now. A lot of what we see in WCAG 2.2 just builds on top of those key ideas and is like the cherry on the cake.”
He continued, “Even if you’ve got to a point where your website is brilliant for WCAG 2.1 AA, people are still all too often forgetting about the accessibility of their apps, social media, PDFs and documents and, in all likelihood, those are just as important as your website. I would recommend prioritizing all those extra elements before thinking about shifting to WCAG 2.2.”
Presently, owners of digital products will focus on the guidelines available to them but industry commentators and thought leaders are already looking ahead to WCAG 3.0, the first public draft of which was issued in 2021. WCAG 3.0 promises to be a significant departure from the 2.x series with a renewed focus on new and emerging technologies such as mixed reality and voice as well as deploying a more nuanced and sophisticated scoring system to determine a web page’s compliance status.
WCAG 3.0 may yet be many years away but Dr. Lionel Wollberger COO of UserWay a Delaware-based full-service digital accessibility firm and voting member of the W3C believes it can’t come quickly enough.
“We are very keen for the industry to go on to 3.0,” says Wollberger.
“One of the issues with the 2.x series is that it is very binary with a mindset that websites are static and that if a single success criteria failure is identified then a website is not accessible based on very simplistic checkbox criteria. When it eventually arrives, 3.0 will be a revolution,” Wollberger stresses.
For the time being, however, it looks like 2.2 is likely to prove to be a stretch for some organizations and, as of right now, would appear to be more of a reasonable destination to be heading towards rather than somewhere essential to be decisively located.
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