The Requirements for WCAG 3.0 document is the next phase in the development of the next major upgrade to accessibility guidelines that will be the successor to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2 series. The Silver Task Force of the Accessibility Guidelines Working Group and the W3C Silver Community group have partnered to incubate the needs, requirements, and structure for the new accessibility guidance. To date, the group has:
The Requirements for WCAG 3.0 is published as a joint effort of the Silver Task Force of the Accessibility Guidelines Working Group and of the W3C Silver Community Group. It is a work in progress, and comments are welcome as Github Issues or by email.
This is the second phase of the Requirements developed during Q1 2019 after months of prototyping work. We anticipate one additional phase in Q3-Q4 2019 after months of evaluating how well actual content can be developed for WCAG 3.0.
People with disabilities can face problems using online content and applications. Disabilities can be permanent, temporary, or recurring limitations.
We need guidance that:
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 were designed to be technology neutral, and has stayed relevant for over 10 years. The Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG) 2.0 has been implemented in the open source authoring tool communities (chiefly Wordpress and Drupal) with little known uptake in commercial authoring tools. UAAG 2.0 offers useful guidance to user agent developers and has been implemented on an individual success criterion basis. There is no known user agent that has implemented all of UAAG 2.0.
WCAG 3.0 builds on the WCAG 2.0 Requirements of 2006. The WCAG 2.0 requirements are:
WCAG 3.0 wishes to advance the WCAG 2.0 Requirements of:
WCAG 3.0 does not want to advance the WCAG 2.0 requirement: "Ensure that the revision is 'backwards and forward compatible'" . The intention is to include WCAG 2.x content, but migrate it to a different structure and conformance model.
The WCAG 2.1 Requirements are very specific to WCAG 2.1 and will not be advanced by WCAG 3.0. WCAG 3.0 plans to migrate the content of WCAG 2.1 to WCAG 3.0, but the WCAG 2.1 Requirements document referred to structural requirements which are specific to WCAG 2.x.
The WCAG 2.1 Requirements are:
WCAG 3.0 will have a broader scope than WCAG 2.0 and 2.1. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are scoped to Web and to Content. WCAG 3.0 is being designed to be able to include:
The current project design does not intend to write separate specifications or normative requirements for the technology stack beyond digital content. The goal is to provide information that technology venders can choose to use to improve the accessibility of their products to support the guidelines.
Introductory text about the research efforts undertaken, with pointers to methodology and results
The research done in 2017-2018 by the Silver Task Force, the Silver Community Group, and the research partners was used to identify the key problem statements related to the current accessibility guidelines (WCAG 2.x, ATAG 2.0 and UAAG 2.0). See the Silver Research Summary slides for more detailed information. These problem statements were used to identify the opportunities for WCAG 3.0 to address that will improve accessibility guidance.
During the year of WCAG 3.0 research, a recurring theme was the popularity and quality of the guidance in WCAG 2.0. Most of the opportunities identified in the research were improvements in the structure and presentation accessibility guidance to improve usability, to support more disability needs, and to improve maintenance.
In addition to the above research, an issue was raised about how to apply accessibility evaluation and conformance to large and dynamic web sites which are updated frequently. This led to development of Challenges with Accessibility Guidelines Conformance and Testing, and Approaches for Mitigating Them. Suggestions in that document are an additional source of input to these requirements.
This document has two sections: a Design Principles section and a Requirements section. Requirements need to be measured or clearly demonstrated. They are used at the W3C phase of Candidate Recommendation, where the Candidate Recommendation Transition Request reports that the requirements were met. Design Principles are important statements that are less measurable, but are used to guide, shape and steer decision-making during the development process of WCAG 3.0. Both are essential in guiding the development of the WCAG 3.0 project.
The Problem Statements describe areas identified during the WCAG 3.0 research in 2017-2018 that can be addressed in the new guidelines. Each problem statement also has an opportunity section that is the basis for the WCAG 3.0 Requirements.
There are several areas for exploration in how conformance can work. These opportunities may or may not be incorporated. Then need to work together, and that interplay will be governed by the design principles
The Accessibility Guidelines Working Group wants to commit to a) improving equity of all types in our processes and participation and b) improving equity for the full spectrum of users with disabilities in content authored using WCAG3. Exactly what that will encompass and how it can be measured is under exploration and discussion.
The primary scope for equity in WCAG 3 is to address equity for persons with disabilities, including users with more than one disability. Work is under way in the Framework for Accessible Specification of Technologies (FAST) to categorize functional needs, including the intersection between different functional categories, to help achieve this. Efforts towards equity must also consider the spectrum of human experience and how it intersects with disability. This includes but is not limited to socio-economic status, sexual orientation, religion, race, physical appearance, neurotype, nationality, mental health, language, indigeneity, immigration status, gender, gender identity and gender expression, ethnicity, disability (both visible and invisible), caste, body, or age. This list draws from the W3C's Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct (CEPC), and we intend to stay aligned with the CEPC.
The term “equity” refers to the ability of people with diverse characteristics to access and understand content and to participate effectively in processes. Web accessibility guidelines seek to increase equity for people with disabilities by ensuring supports are provided for people with different functional needs. Work towards equity considers three layers:
“Equity” as a noun is a hypothetical or target state, not one that will necessarily be fully reached in practice. It is also a lens through which to analyze practices or outcomes. Equity is distinct from equality, in that equity focuses on equivalent results, whereas equality only provides similar opportunities. An equitable practice may provide minimal supports for many users, moderate for others, and extensive for some, in order for all of them to be able to complete a task with comparable facility. Requirements for equity are informed by the nature of inequities that exist.
An “equity-centered process” aims to make meaningful progress towards the goal of reducing inequity. The Accessibility Guidelines Working Group’s participatory design approach requires involvement from people across the spectrum of functional needs, with appropriate supports for ongoing building of awareness, trust in each other, and ownership of personal responsibility in the process. It also requires accountability to the process and results, in the form of cyclical progress reviews and goal updates.
Outstanding questions that need to be addressed include:
The WCAG 3.0 Design Principles are based on the requirements of WCAG 2.0 and build on those requirements to meet needs identified in the WCAG 3.0 research.
Accessibility guidelines should:
The creation process for the guidelines should:
Previous W3C Accessibility Guidelines described how to make web pages accessible to people with disabilities. These guidelines provided a flexible framework that has kept the guidelines relevant for 10 years. Changing technology and changing needs of people with disabilities has shown areas where they could be improved. The requirements are drawn from the research performed by WCAG 3.0 to improve the guidelines, and the suggestions from the Silver Design Sprint.
The WCAG 3.0 Requirements are high level and will be expanded and refined as Silver members move through the prototyping process.
Silver guidance includes tests and other evaluation methods. Some guidance may use true/false verification but other guidance will use other ways of measuring and/or evaluating where appropriate so that more needs of people with disabilities may be included (for example: rubrics, sliding scale, task-completion, user research with people with disabilities, and more). This approach includes particular attention to people whose needs may better be met with a broad testing strategy, such as people with low vision, limited vision, or cognitive and learning disabilities.
Create a maintenance and extensibility model for guidelines that can better meet the needs of people with disabilities using emerging technologies and interactions. The process of developing the guidance includes experts in the technology.
Make the guidelines available in different accessible and usable ways or formats so the guidance can be customized by and for different audiences.
Guidance should be expressed in generic terms so that they may apply to more than one platform or technology. The intent of technology-neutral wording is to provide the opportunity to apply the core guidelines to current and emerging technology, even if specific technical advice doesn't yet exist.
The core guidelines are understandable by a non-technical audience. Text and presentation are usable and understandable through the use of plain language, structure, and design. They link to instruction videos, illustrations, and how-to where available. Creation of new videos and illustrations are outside the scope of this project at this time.
The Guidelines provide broad support, including
The Guidelines motivate organizations to go beyond minimal accessibility requirements by providing a scoring system that rewards organizations which demonstrate a greater effort to improve accessibility.
The guidelines provide guidance for people and organizations that produce digital assets and technology of varying size and complexity. This includes large, dynamic, and complex websites. Our intent is to provide guidance for a diverse group of stakeholders including content creators, browsers, authoring tools, assistive technologies, and more.