WCAG 2.0 Quick Reference

The recent WCAG 2.0 web accessibility guidelines have come for quite a lot of stick recently. Most notably from Joe Clark in his scathing A List Apart article.

Most criticisms seem to point to the overly verbose and confusing nature of the new guidelines which far from clarify the issues surrounding accessibility issues actually muddy the waters further. I have to say I agree. Having a quick scan through the guidelines it’s extremely difficult to decipher what the guidelines refer to in practical useful terms. In the new guidelines, all mention of “pages” and “websites” has been replaced with talk of “authored unit” or “web unit”. Very confusing.

Failings aside, it’s still all in our best interest to come to grips with these guidelines in a bid to ever improve the accessibility of our websites, and stay on the right side of possible future legislation. To this end, the Web Accessibility Initiative has just released a WCAG 2.0 Quick Reference which identifies key areas of concern and techniques sufficient to meet them.

Well worth a look if you’re interested in web accessibility, and in this day and age that means all web developers.