The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 defines how to make web content more accessible to people with disabilities. Accessibility involves a wide range of disabilities, including speech, visual, auditory, physical, cognitive, language, learning, and neurological disabilities. Although these guidelines cover a wide range of issues, they cannot meet the needs of people with all types, degrees and combinations of disabilities. These guidelines also make web content more usable by older individuals with the change of skills due to aging and often improve usability for all users.
WCAG 2.0 was developed through a collaborative process between the W3C and individuals and organizations around the world, with the aim of providing a shared standard for the accessibility of web content that meets the needs of individuals, organizations and governments internationally. WCAG 2.0 is based on WCAG 1.0 and is designed to be applied broadly to different web technologies now and in the future and to be testable with a combination of automated testing and human evaluation.
Web accessibility depends not only on accessible content, but also on accessible browsers and other user agents. Authoring tools also play an important role in web accessibility. That is why the W3C has developed specific guidelines for user agents (UAAG) and Author tools (ATAG).
The WCAG, in both the 1st version in 1999 and the 2nd version in 2008, as well as the 2nd version in 2014, have four fundamental principles:
Perceivable – all information and interface must be readable and perceived by all;
operable – navigation and access to all functionalities shall be ensured, irrespective of the user profile and navigation devices used
Understandable – all information must be understood by everyone and provide for tolerance of error;
Robust – should ensure interoperability between systems and technological compatibility.
Find out the details of the guidelines for web content in the authorized version of the WCAG 2.0 translation.
Or see WCAG 2.1 in English that includes new criteria for mobile devices.
