The W3C year in Web Accessibilitytfrandzen27/12/2013
The W3C year in Web Accessibility
Scott Hollier, PhD has written an interesting and informative piece about the year in web accessibility, especially regarding the activities at W3C WAI.
http://www.accessiq.org/new...
He conclude that two of the most promising developments are the release of a draft version of Easy Checks - A First Review of Web Accessibility (http://www.w3.org/WAI/eval/...) and the publication of WCAG2ICT (http://www.w3.org/TR/wcag2i...).
The first is a guide for non-experts on how to check a web site for conformance to the accessibility guidelines. In my experience this is much needed, as many content providers and webmasters have limited technical knowledge and often have no experience with working with standards. The Danish Agency for Digitisation has previously made a similar (if less detailed) guide aimed specifically at public sector webmasters in Denmark (http://www.digst.dk/Moedet-...).
The WCAG2ICT is equally relevant and explains which parts of WCAG 2.0 apply directly to documents and software, which ones apply to a point, and which ones aren?t relevant. As a lot of content on the web today is documents (typically PDFs, which may not even have been made for web publication in the first place) and while at the same time there seems to be a lack of consolidated standards for accessible non-web information systems, this is really useful.
Basically, conformance to the WCAG is a necessary pre-requisite for Assistive technologies to work with various web content and other software. As such making the guidelines themselves more understandable to a wider audience may be a significant step forward.