The W3C web accessibility initiative – 2010 year in review

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As 2010 draws to a close, it’s a good time to reflect back on the year that was and look at the progress and contribution made by the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) and others making use of the relevant web standards. This month’s column runs through the active WAI groups, what’s happened in 2010 and what’s on the horizon for 2011.

One of the biggest developments of standards during 2010 has been from the Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG) Working Group, which is just about to release the ATAG 2.0 standard.  Its final public draft having come and gone during the year, it’s likely that this will be formally released any day now. Watch this space for more discussion on the impact of ATAG 2.0 in 2011. 

The Education and Outreach Working Group have also been very busy during 2010 with the creation of two great resource documents. The first looks at ‘How web accessibility and usability work together’, which has just been released, while the second document ‘How people with disabilities use the web’ is in its final draft. The working group have also produced some great presentation resources.

However, the biggest talking point of 2010 in W3C accessibility would have to be the Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) work that has been previously discussed in our W3C column. With its recent working draft call now closed, work continues on these important standards that allow developers to provide commands directly to assistive technology products.

One of the quiet achievers of the WAI is the User Agent Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (UAWG), which is designed to provide guidelines for developers that are specifically building web browsers. The UAAG 2.0 draft was recently updated internally. The accessibility of web browsers is likely to have a big impact on the accessibility of the cloud in the future, so hopefully with developments like Google’s Chrome OS, we’ll see these guidelines being used widely in the future.

Finally the working group dedicated to web content, responsible for WCAG, has remained active this year despite WCAG 2.0 having been released two years ago. The group have focused on updating their ‘WCAG 2.0 techniques’ document which will be valuable to many developers, especially in the context of the biggest Australian accessibility announcement this year, the adoption of WCAG 2.0 by the Federal government to ensure WCAG 2.0 ‘AA” compliance over the coming years.

Before signing off for the year, I’d like to thank all of you who have taken the time to read the column and look forward to providing more information on all things W3C-related in 2011.


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