One interesting thing in WCAG 2 is that it specifies what type of material is subject to be certified as ok or not.

• Conformance (or partial or not conformance) is addressed to the whole, full web page. Fortunately, the WAI has included a very clear definition for web page: it includes not only HTML pages or linked CSS styles, but also the elements that are inserted into them, like videos, flash movies, games, sounds….
  Anyway, if there is a linked alternate for an un-accessible content that enables its accessibility (eg. a longdesc document), they are considered part of the web page, and enables the possibility of conformance.
• If a web page is part of a process (e.g., a checkout on a shop), we have to audit the complete process. It has no sense to certify that this shop is ok if the last step is not ok.
• Remember that, if there is an un-accessibility information or functionality, like an Ajax-based application, you must provide an accessible alternate version, like non-javascript version. The key is to include this alternate version in a way that user agents (including assistive technologies) can understand it and use it.
• Following the previous concept, the un-accessible content or technology must not block the rest of the controls (e.g. flash movies usually gets the ‘focus’ on it, and it is pretty hard to use the keyboard out of it). Remember also that the technology used at that page may be “Turned on”, “Turned off” or “Not supported” by the user agents (including assistive technologies).

  Keep in mind these four Success Criteria (will be explained afterwards), related to this concept:

  • 1.4.2 Audio Controls
  • 2.1.2 Keyboard Traps
  • 2.3.1 Three Flashes or Below Threshold
  • 2.2.2 Pause, Stop, Hide.

More info

• Understanding Conformance
• Understanding Accessibility Support

Remember the guidelines where divided into different success criteria? Nice. Those success criteria are classified into 3 levels.

• Single-A (A): the lowest
• Double-A (AA): the medium
• Triple-A (AAA): the highest

They are similar to the WCAG 1.0 checkpoints’ priorities, but WCAG 2.0 stresses that all success criteria are important: Lowest level enables the access to the webpages, and highest level enables their usability.

To decide which level is each criterion, the WAI has established these questions:

• Is this success criterion essential? If this criterion not met, the user agents (including assistive technology) cannot reproduce the webpage.
• Is this success criterion applicable for every website, despite its content, type of content, technology used…?
• Can the content creators be able to learn how to meet this success criterion? The WAI has establised one week or less to acquire these skills.
• How will this success criterion limit the functions or “look & feel” of the page? This includes functionality, presentation, freedom of expression (everyone, including not tech-people should contribute), design or aesthetic.
• Is there an alternative, indirect way if the success criterion is not met?

One great point on WCAG 2 is that they provide an official way of testing each criterion. We will see how can we test them later.

More info

• Understanding Levels of Conformance
• Conformance requirements

So, once you have tested the success criteria, you can state the conformance of your webpage into 3 levels:

• Level Single-A (A): your webpage satisfies all the Single-A (A) success criteria.
• Level Double-A (AA): your webpage satisfies all the Single-A (A) and Double-A (AA) success criteria.
• Level Triple-A (AAA): your webpage satisfies all the Single-A (A), Double-A (AA) and Triple-A (AAA) success criteria.

Can you remember a webpage is a whole? So if your un-accessible webpages has an alternate accessible version that fulfills the criteria, then you can say that your webpage has achieved a level.

The WAI also suggest two things:

• Although you get a conformance level (e.g. “A”), keep working on making a more accessible website and publishing any improvement you make (e.g. “We are level A but we have also passes these level Double-A criteria.”
• Level Triple-A is pretty hard to get and maintain, so be careful to state that a entire website is Level Triple-A, especially with some content (e.g. a place where everyone uploads videos, but nobody keeps an eye on their subtitles).

More info

• Understanding Levels of Conformance
• Conformance requirements

Once you have tested your webpages, you want to tell everyone that you have cared about accessibility. In WCAG 1.0 you had the fancy logos, but they had a great problem: everybody could use them despite of being accessible or not.

Nowadays, the W3C is unable to verify each website that uses the logo, so the WAI tries to fix this problem using the new logos with a conformance claim.

Both conformance icons and claims refer to a single webpage, unless the webmaster includes an explicit scope information explaining which pages are covered by the claim and the icon. The pages can be a series of pages (e.g. a checkout) or multiple related webpages (e.g. a subdomain).

What to include in your conformance claim

If you use a conformance claim, there is required and optional information you should provide.

The required information

• The date of the claim.
• The guidelines you have followed: title, version and URI “Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 at http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-WCAG20-20081211/“
• The conformance level of the webpages: Level Single-A, Double-A or Triple-A.
• A brief description of the webpages, with the URIs or an expression that describes the URIs.
• Web content technologies used (PDF, flash…) and, if they are turned off or unsupported, it will not conform (relied upon). A link to official software that can renders this content is recommended.

Optional Components

You may include also in your conformance claim:

• Which success criteria your webpage have passed beyond the level of conformance claimed. Moreover, include information about any additional steps taken that go beyond the success criteria to enhance accessibility.
• Technologies that are used but an accessible, standard alternative is provided (not relied upon).
• Which user agents, including assistive technologies you have used to test the content.
• A metadata version of the specific technologies relied upon.
• A metadata version of the conformance claim.

In the next post, I will give examples and explain how to use metadata versions in conformance claims.

If you don’t want to tell anybody….

If you are really cool, you can conform to WCAG 2.0 without making any claim, because conformance claims are not required. Just be good at your job!

More info

• W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 Conformance Logos
• Conformance Claims
• Understanding Conformance Claims

Imagine you have done a great job in designing your website. Now, it’s time for the users to add the content. But those users can be anyone, even outside of your organization, so you simply cannot be everywhere.

This point was a great problem with WCAG 1 conformance claims, so the WCAG 2 provides two options:

1. If you monitor and repair the external-content errors on your webpages within 2 business days, you can use the normal claim of conformance.
2. You can claim for a statement of partial conformance to that pages where, if certain parts were removed, they would conform. You can only use this partial conformance if that content is not under your control. The way to do it is adding the following text to the claim:
   • “This page does not conform, but would conform to WCAG 2.0 at level X if the following parts from uncontrolled sources were removed.”
   • A list with the description of that parts that users can identify

More info

• Statement of Partial Conformance – Third Party Content