May the 16th was a big day on many levels. It was the thirteenth Global Accessibility Awareness Day on global level and second official Global Accessibility Awareness Day in Slovenia.
But that was only the beginning if we consider that W3C Accessibility Guidelines (yes, not Web, but W3C – as this is WCAG 3) got a giant update of 12 new guidelines with 174 suggested outcomes (opens in new window). Please note – these are not a standard yet and serve only to collect potential outcomes that the WCAG 3 working group will be exploring. So – don’t throw away WCAG 2 yet – it is still latest standard (in most legislation version 2.1 and I suggest you embrace version 2.2 as a default as it will eventually replace 2.1), but it’s nice to be able to get a sense about the future.
12 exploratory guidelines with 174 suggested outcomes of WCAG 3
Once again – please remember – these are exploratory and far from being accepted. But they are still a good indication about what will potentially be relevant. Well, most of them are relevant already today, if we think about making things accessible and usable (and not just conformance to WCAG 2.x). We must also keep in mind that WCAG 3 wants to cover also non-author parts of accessibility (opens in new window), like for example Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG) and User Agent Accessibility Guidelines (UAAG), so some guidelines are perhaps not targeting you personally.
The original document provides guidelines in lists with sublists, but I prefer table presentation for this situation, so that I know immediately the name of the guideline before the outcome. Please note that all links in the following table open in new window/tab.
Quick reflections
I didn’t have the time to really investigate into the details yet, but I still have some brief reflections that I want to express here;
- Some folks already expressed stress and overwhelm at the 174 new outcomes (knowing well that this is only the beginning). The Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (AGWG) tried hard to be clear about the temporary state of this situation, but it does indicate that WCAG 3 will most certainly outgrow WCAG 2.x. I think we need to make sure that UAAG and ATAG will be clearly marked, so that authors will find their responsibilities more effectively.
- It would also help if we would have at least a hint about priority of the outcomes (like levels A, AA and AAA). I know that it can take a lot of time and basically negotiations, but it would help understanding the intentions and probably also help with more discussions.
- Luckily there are a lot of outcomes that can be directly mapped to WCAG 2.X, so I do not consider the situation extremely new and revolutionary but I like that it really tries to be more distinct and also break some parts down, so that we will potentially have more segmented controls.
Once again – please consider this as a draft that will absolutely be changed. But also consider the fact that some outcomes are “on the radar” of the group and I can actually see the WCAG 3 to have a potential to improve also end user usability. It is still too early, but I like that progress is obvious and that GAAD got another dimension.