WCAG2.1 overview

Web content accessibility guidelines(WCAG)2.1 has become W3C recommendation just a couple of days ago and it is on 5 June 2018. I think this should be most memorable day for all of us. In fact, we need to celebrate this day as we have got additional guidelines almost after 10 and half years. Yes, WCAG2.0 evolved on 11 December 2008 as W3C recommendation. With the introduction of WCAG2.1, let us hope that web is going to be much more accessible than ever before. now it is the time to explore this topic.

What’s new in WCAG 2.1

The important information that we need to understand is that all success criteria from 2.0 are included in 2.1. The 2.0 success criteria are exactly the same (verbatim, word-for-word) in 2.1. WCAG 2.1 provides 17 additional success criteria and out of 17  success criteria, 5 of them are levelA, 7 of them are levelAA, and 5 of them are levelAAA. All these success criteria addresses:

  • mobile accessibility
  • people with low vision
  • people with cognitive and learning disabilities

For users of mobile devices, WCAG 2.1 provides updated guidance including support for user interactions using touch, handling more complex gestures, and for avoiding unintended activation of an interface. For users with low vision, WCAG 2.1 extends contrast requirements to graphics, and introduces new requirements for text and layout customization to support better visual perception of web content and controls. For users with cognitive, language, and learning disabilities, WCAG 2.1 improvements include a requirement to provide information about the specific purpose of input controls, as well as additional requirements to support timeouts due to inactivity. This can help many users better understand web content and how to successfully interact with it.

As with WCAG 2.0, following these guidelines will continue to make content more accessible to a wider range of people with disabilities, including blindness and low vision, deafness and hearing loss, limited movement, speech disabilities, photosensitivity, and learning disabilities and cognitive limitations. Following these guidelines can also make websites more usable for all users.

All the names of the new guidelines are listed below as we are going to discuss each one of them as deep as possible in the coming blog posts.

 

  • 1.3.4 Orientation (Level AA)
  • 1.3.5 Identify Input Purpose (AA)
  • 1.3.6 Identify Purpose (AAA)
  • 1.4.10 Reflow (AA)
  • 1.4.11 Non-Text Contrast (AA)
  • 1.4.12 Text Spacing (AA)
  • 1.4.13 Content on Hover or Focus (AA)
  • 2.1.4 Character Key Shortcuts (A)
  • 2.2.6 Timeouts (AAA)
  • 2.3.3 Animation from Interactions (AAA)
  • 2.5.1 Pointer Gestures (A)
  • 2.5.2 Pointer Cancellation (A)
  • 2.5.3 Label in Name (A)
  • 2.5.4 Motion Actuation (A)
  • 2.5.5 Target Size (AAA)
  • 2.5.6 Concurrent Input Mechanisms (AAA)
  • 4.1.3 Status Messages (AA)

References

2 Replies to “WCAG2.1 overview”

  1. Hi Sindhu, i thought i replied to this question. apologies for the delay response. regarding character key shortcut testing, we need to check whether author implemented these character shortcut keys or not. once author says yes, we need to check if either we can turn off or remap with the modifier keys. if either of them is possible then we can actually pass this SC. this is the very short answer but there are many instances we might have to fail this SC. please stay tuned for my future blog post on the same.

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