CSUN: Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines

Jeanne Spellman presents about ATAG version 2, which is at a critical stage in the W3C process. If you are interested in web-authoring tools, please read this.

NB: I am also on the Authoring Tools working group.

Jeanne has put the HTML based slides up so I won’t do detailed notes, but some observations and notes on top of those slides:

• The connection to WCAG is very close, to a large degree it is how well you are implementing WCAG. Many of the checkpoints are basically WCAG checks in a specific situation.
• Benefits include saving money, you can prevent retro-fitting accessibility later and the system will be more robust if it meets ATAG.
• There is likely to be a need for accessibility consultants who know ATAG, to help larger organisations with the products.

Someone asked about a good place to start reading up on it, and Jeanne recommended the “implementing ATAG2” document, which is the equivalent of the “Understanding WCAG” pages.

Next steps

ATAG version 2 is a “Candidate Recommendation”, so it needs implementations to prove that it works. Please help us test it! If you know how to test WCAG we need your help, you can test from anywhere using a web tool.

Please do get in touch with Jeanne or me or public-atag2-comments@w3.org.