Joe Clark has released the final WCAG Samurai’s errata, an update to the (almost) 9 year old Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 guidelines (WCAG).
Having been through it twice now, I’ve also compared it with our internal accessibility auditing criteria. With a few (fairly academic) exceptions, they match up, so I can happily recommend the WCAG1+errata as a statement of current best practice in web accessibility.
Considering our internal criteria are WCAG 1 plus our practical experience when testing with people, that is to be expected.
Previewing the WCAG version 2, I don’t think there will be too much upheaval when comparing one to the other when(ever) they are released, although I haven’t checked the HTML techniques for a while. In any case, WCAG 2’s advantage is that it applies to non-HTML web technology as well, something the WCAG 1 errata is not trying to cover.
Exceptions
- Interim measures: I would still assume that some people are still forced to use Internet Explorer 6 at work, therefore we will still fail for pixel sized fonts for public sites.
- I wouldn’t necessarily fail a site for using frames if they did it well, but I have to say that hasn’t come up yet.
I love that quote:
Yeah, there’s plenty of things – like using frames – that don’t by themselves mean a site will be inaccessible but you shudder when you see them because you know all your past experience tends to indicate an uh-oh…