WCAG 1.0 was published as a recommendation on May the 5th, 1999. And here we are, 25 years later, with WCAG 2.2 as the latest version. Unfortunately many professionals still deliver digital products withouth even knowing about accessibility.
If I think about current state of inaccessibility of the web, I can not help to wonder why we are still struggling with the basics, with awareness and with inaccessibility being the default. How come WCAG still isn’t integrated into every step of digital production? Not to mention education (both official and non-official)? Sure, there is a lot of progress made and eventually schools will teach some parts of accessibility, some bootcamps will integrate basic WCAG and people will be more aware, but after 25 years we are in most cases still at the beginning.
Current legislative changes seem to improve the awareness part, but it would be way easier if WCAG would be embraced as an essential part of the digital production, as one of key elements – that it would be there as a default, just like security is. Legislation forces WCAG to be seen as a compliance risk, and a checkbox needed to be checked – all of it is not optimal and sometimes it triggers some sort of rebellion. The bad sort of rebellion – where people work against changes to the better, not understanding the implications. Where WCAG is representing cost but not benefits.
As accessibility advocates we need to be better at promoting the good parts of the accessibility and only reach out to legislation when people really can’t be convinced. But it is difficult, as WCAG are only guidelines and people sometimes expect they have all the answers or even recipes. When we consider the complexity and the advancements of digital technologies we can fast understand that WCAG will always be behind, there will always be situations where it will be difficult to suggest best solutions, but we really can and must promote the basics and make things more accessible with it.
We definitely need more awareness, still, after all those years. Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) is a nice initiative, although I don’t like it only a single day (people do work around that more and more, as it is sometimes causing “attention cannibalism” with hundreds of events on the same day).
