Sharp critique of W3C Accessibility Guidelines by Joe Clark

In To Hell with WCAG2 Joe Clark, provides a detailed, fierce, and apparently well-based critique of the nearly finalised version 2 of the World Wide Web Consortium's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Here is the introductory paragraph.

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 were published in 1999 and quickly grew out of date. The proposed new WCAG 2.0 is the result of five long years’ work by a Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) committee that never quite got its act together. In an effort to be all things to all web content, the fundamentals of WCAG 2 are nearly impossible for a working standards-compliant developer to understand. WCAG 2 backtracks on basics of responsible web development that are well accepted by standardistas. WCAG 2 is not enough of an improvement and was not worth the wait.

Some readers of Fortnightly Mailing are accessibility practitioners, and "plain English" comments on whether or not WCAG2 is a step forward will be welcome.

Thanks to Joe Clark for sending me a comment linking to the above definition of "standardista".

Comments

[Stephen Brown]

Clark's article is a bit of a rant but a really important point he makes is that sites that conform to WCAG 2.0 may still not be acccessible. In fact conformance with guidelines may actually render a site inaccessible. What is missing is a useful and usable set of guidelines for developers.

We have tried to address this with a simple set of heuristics in http://www.archimuse.com/mw2006/papers/brown/brown.html.

[Jonathan Grove]

One of my key concerns is the negative impact that the incoherent, inconsistent and inaccessible(!) nature of WCAG 2.0 may have on peoples' understanding of the accessible web.

There has been a lot of effort made by diverse organisations to raise awareness of accessibility, that WCAG 2.0 may seriously undermine. Whereas WCAG 1.0 tended to act as a rallying point for accessible web developers (of varying levels of commitment), WCAG 2.0 may lead to the emergence of 'competing' standards that fragment the movement and lead to confusion among non-specialists.

This short PDF (25 kb) covers a few of our concerns - The document was provided to IST-43 as part of a call for comment on WCAG 2.0 from the British Standards Institution.