The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 was published as an official standard December 11, 2008. I've been involved with this work indirectly for 10 years, and directly for 6 years, so this represents the culmination of a lot of energy and focus. For the past few years we've just been processing the thousands of comments we've received. This year alone we pushed out three stages of the document, each of which required certain formal work to be done. Setting up a procedure to collect information about Web sites that satisfy the guidelines, and evaluate the sites, and verify the evaluations was a huge project for the year.
The publication of WCAG 2.0 has been big news. So far, I've seen press and blog activity in Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish. Some of the more interesting press coverage so far:
- W3C Q&A blog: WCAG 2.0 is Finalized
- BBC: New guidelines boost web access
- Wired Campus (Chronicle of Higher Education): Consortium Releases New Guidelines for Web Accessibility
- Outlaw: Web accessibility moves forward as WCAG 2.0 comes into force
- RNIB: WCAG 2.0 Becomes A W3C Standard
- Journal du Net: W3C / WCAG 2.0 : une clarification des règles d'accessibilité
- Mas Que Accesibilidad: Las Guías de Accesibilidad WCAG 2.0 ya son una realidad
- Programmazione.it: WCAG 2.0, nuova era per l'accessibilità del Web
- 디지털타임스: W3C, 웹접근성 가이드 2.0 발표 "장애우ㆍ노인도 사용 쉽도록"
- Web担当者Forum: W3CがアクセシビリティガイドラインWCAG 2.0を勧告として発表
- CSDN.net: W3C更新Web Accessibility标准
I think the WCAG Working Group has to have had one of me most interesting rides of any standards group. The group was convened for 10 years, and while there has been some in-and-out of membership, there also have been people involved for a very long time (and who are even more relieved than I to have this done!). The membership has included industry representatives and accessibility advocates working to balance their respective needs. The work was done by and large in good faith and with respect to other points of view. Two people who met through the working group ended up get married. One of our co-chairs had to leave his role because of leukemia and he died earlier this year, which was a huge loss personally and to the profession (there's a very nice audio eulogy). So really entire life cycles took place with this work. The group even has its own theme song!
Although I expect to be involved in WCAG 2.0 for a while yet, I look forward to the change in work responsibilities this finalization affords me. There's a lot of interesting work that I just never found time to do, and now hopefully I can squeeze it in.
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