Who defines what best practice looks like?
The guidelines in this article are designed to outline what is required for your website to be compliant with international best practice: Level AA of The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). (You can read more about WCAG in our helpful glossary at the end of this post.)
The following four principles are designed to ensure your digital services remain accessible to everyone, including users with impairments or disabilities linked to vision, hearing, mobility, and thinking and understanding. Each section is divided into a handy guide for content editors and factors which you can brief your web and design agency to apply.
Get in touch for an accessibility audit assessment report.
Understanding the acronyms
W3C: The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international community where Member organisations, staff and the public work together to lead the Web to its full potential. Which includes promoting a high degree of usability for people with disabilities. Directed by Tim Berners-Lee (that’s the British guy who invented the world wide web)
WAI: The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) is an initiative of the W3C and develops standards and support materials to help you understand and implement accessibility.
WCAG 2.0: The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are part of a series of web accessibility guidelines published by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the main international standards organization for the Internet
WCAG 2.1: Extends Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 provides new success criteria as guidance for mobile device users by supporting interactions using touch and gestures.
Level A, AA , AAA
WCAG 2.1 guidelines are categorised into three different levels of conformance
Level A: The minimum level of conformance, the website satisfies all the Level A Success Criteria, or a conforming alternate version is provided.
Level AA: The mid-level of conformance to obtain. We recommend Level AA as the conformance for all our client applications
Level AAA: The highest and hardest level of conformance to obtain. It is not recommended that Level AAA conformance be required as a general policy for entire sites because it is not possible to satisfy all Level AAA Success Criteria for some content.
ADA: Americans with Disabilities Act. The Attorney General has publishing regulations for implementing the requirements of title II (state and local government services) and title III (public accommodations and commercial facilities) of the ADA. These regulations are codified in the Code of Federal Regulations.